Steam Prompts OS X Graphics Update

Stoobalou writes "Mac gamers got a massive boost when online gaming hub Steam started supporting the platform a few months ago. The arrival of the online service, which allowed Mac-toting gamers to play some of the same games as their PC brethren, in some cases cross-platform, created a great deal of debate between the two camps, with the PC crowd pillorying Mac fans for the relatively poor performance of their expensive hardware. Now it seems that Apple has gotten the message, as they have provided a graphics update for OS X Snow Leopard which will make progress toward closing the gap between the two platforms."

Comments

Slow graphics on Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with this update, Macs still lag behind PCs, not because the OS is bad, but because the hardware that ships with even the latest refreshes is just plain outdated. 2008 called, wants its graphics card back from the i7 iMac for example. Wake me up when new Macs can run the latest Crysis sequel as a game, not a pretty slide-show.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[timster]

Yeah, 2008 sure does want that 5750 bad, but does she want it badly enough to wait until late 2009?

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[dbet]

Regardless of the non-state of the art of their vid cards, the same cards are (or were) running better when booting Windows on the same computer than under OSX. Hopefully they've fixed this.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[fyrewulff]

I thought the whole point of the iMac is that you're buying a small form factor, which will inherently always be behind a tower in terms of power:cost.

It's essentially a unportable laptop.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[jythie]

Since the vast majority of PCs can not run Crysis out of the box, I am not sure this is a useful metric. On-board video has never been all that good, which if you buy any 'all in one' computer is what you usually get.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would be perfectly acceptable if the trend were just confined to the if-this-thing-goes-more-than-an-inch-thick-steve-will-kill-my-children Apple laptop segment....

Trouble is, though, that Apple's habit of shipping seriously tepid graphics hardware extends even to their iMacs(which may be thin; but are pretty big. The thermal engineers can suck it up.) and Mac Pros(workstation class towers bristling with fans in a blow-through configuration, this should be cake).

Unlike the Wintel guys, Apple does have the advantage of(at present) refusing to ship any intel integrated something "GPU"s; but they top out alarmingly low, for machines of their price. And, since EFI and traditional BIOS still have lingering togetherness issues, even the $3k+ Mac Pro crowd can't just go out and drop a screaming gamer's(or workstation) card in there until either Apple or Nvidia/ATI get around to blessing one, which generally takes about a generation. Everyone below them can't really make any changes at all.

By comparison, the state of "casual" Wintel graphics is truly dire, consisting of whatever Intel is willing to puke out or(if you are lucky) a bottom of the barrel ATI chipset from a generation or two ago shoved into an AMD chipset; but it is downright trivial to buy your way into serious graphics performance, if you care.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[BitZtream]

So your upset that the bottom end Macs dont' include high end graphics cards?

Are you retarded? When did low end machines start coming with modern high end graphics cards from Dell or HP?

My Laptop from last year runs Crysis versions currently available just fine. Of course, its not the bottom end model, but its certainly not the high end model either. I can't say it runs Crysis 2 great, but neither can you say it runs it bad since neither one of us can actually run it ... So your slideshow comment was just a ignorant jab due to your lack of any real logic or reason for your statements.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[TheRaven64]

Irrelevant, since the comparison is between a Mac running OS X, and the same Mac booting Windows.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[ooshna]

I think its the fact that they cost 2 times or more than a low end Dell or HP or whatever and you can throw an extra 100/150 into the Windows machine and have a gaming computer.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[MrHanky]

Sorry, but you're a delusional fanboy and a liar. The only Mac to approach high end graphics is the Mac Pro. If your laptop is a Mac, it doesn't run Crysis well, period.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[bonch]

Wake me up when Crysis is worth playing. Crysis is the game every single PC gamer cites when mocking the Mac, but it's not even a good game. The days of graphics demos disguised as games died in the late 90s. Visuals are a solved problem. More people play 2D FarmVille than all the copies of Crysis ever sold because most people don't care anymore about high-end graphics. Gamers like you are now a smaller niche than the Mac userbase itself.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[el_nino]

Let's totally disregard games for a moment:

This may be self perpetuating, but as I understand it the Mac platform doesn't really have much 3D graphics intensive workstation software available. Users of Photoshop tend to overestimate their own need of graphics hardware, but apart from games, what need do OS X users have of 3D performance if they do not dual boot into Windows (or even Linux - I have to admit to a serious lack of knowledge about the state of Linux based platforms as 3D workstations)?

This is a serious question - I haven't really been part of the field since the battle stood between Alias|Wavefront and Softimage|3D. (I have to admit to liking LightWave 3D on the Amiga though, even though I always loved SGI hardware).

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[morari]

Mac fanboys paying a premium for inferior products? Go figure!

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[SpeZek]

I liked Crysis. It feels like it was made for me.

I think people treat it too much like another Halo or Call of Duty. It's not a run-gun-grenade game. It's much like (surprise surprise) Far Cry. Difficulty is high, taking cover is required, head shots are almost mandatory, using the terrain to your advantage is a must, the right weapon makes all the difference, knowing when not to fight is as important as knowing when to, and it looks pretty as hell.

If there's another game I'd compare it to (other than Far Cry) it would be Delta Force. It's a niche game.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[ToasterMonkey]

head shots are almost mandatory,

typical PC FPS garbage to me.

I've spent the last few days reading about game AI algorithms and the same theme comes up.. "for most genres it's hard to be competitive without cheating, but in a FPS the AI has to be dumbed down because it'll be too good". You can find that sentiment in dozens of articles.

Think about it.. the problem isn't that AI programming is too easy, it's because PC FPS games have no depth, the weapons are hyper accurate, while running, and being shot.. Fix that and the AI is hard, viola.

The picture of a strategic FPS game you tried to paint fell apart soon as you say "head shots are almost mandatory". Bad game.. bad. Your brain should be the weapon of choice.
Why is a bullet to the head such a bitch, but a bullet to the thigh, gut, arm your holding the rifle with, foot, etc are all merely flesh wounds?

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[SpeZek]

Why is a bullet to the head such a bitch, but a bullet to the thigh, gut, arm your holding the rifle with, foot, etc are all merely flesh wounds?

Because if it's not a headshot it doesn't put the enemy down in one shot, so he can alert his friends, and they can rush your position.

Far Cry and Crysis are all about guerrilla tactics (since you're one person against a literal army), and a big part of that aspect is sniping.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[mrsteveman1]

They tend to be behind the curve in laptops, too.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[toddestan]

The problem is that you aren't paying bottom end prices for the Mac. For the price of any of the iMacs, you can put together a pretty nice gaming PC. Meanwhile, the graphics capabilities on the iMac are a joke.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[SSG Bryan]

Get shot in the leg sometime. Take a hit anywhere from any military caliber rifle & you are out of the fight.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[SpeZek]

You can still scream for help though.

Re:Slow graphics on Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple finally stopped selling those shitty Intel cards? For a few years, that was the *only* option in their macbooks, and it was painful to see. Someone charging that much for laptops should know better, but they probably got a good package deal when they swapped over to the Intel cpus.

Vendors

[WilyCoder]

This would be a non issue if apple would let the vendors (AMD, nVidia) write their own mac drivers.

I believe the current situation dictates that Apple writes their own drivers.

Re:Vendors

[Anonymous Coward]

No this is not true... AMD and Nvidia write the hardware facing aspects of their respective graphics drivers and work with Apple on various other aspects. Apple writes the common OpenGL core, etc. AMD+Apple teams and Nvidia+Apple teams are really what exist... this is a good thing and close to what MS has with these vendors

Apple does however qualify and release these drivers via their update channels (not that Nvidia and others haven't release updates of their own at various points).

Re:Vendors

[mlts]

I am going to be a devil's advocate here, but that might be a good thing:

One of the strongest selling points about Apple is that there there are only two points of contact for most things, perhaps even a single point for everything, as opposed to the endless transfers between hardware, software, OS, application, and driver vendors that one gets on other platforms. Apple being the one that writes the drivers means that the customer doesn't have to figure out whose fault it is (Apple's or nVidia's) if there is a crash, it is just one number to call.

Re:Vendors

[Thinine]

Nope, nVidia and AMD both write their own drivers. Apple supplies the OpenGL implementation. This fix was a combination of updated drivers and refinements to Apple's OpenGL to increase performance.

Re:Vendors

[mrsteveman1]

Apple knows best

Re:Vendors

[TheRedDuke]

I believe the current situation dictates that Apple writes their own drivers.

That's correct. Couple that with the fact that the end-user can't really upgrade their video hardware without throwing away the whole computer (excluding the prohibitively expensive Mac Pro) and I'd say Mac gamers still have a long way to go.

Re:Vendors

[Sycraft-fu]

That's fine, but then no bitching if performance sucks. A high performance graphics layer is required if you want high performance games. The CPU has to be able to get data to the GPU quickly and efficiently with minimal overhead to make good use of said GPU. If the implementation remains poor, then the performance will likewise.

Also realize two additional things:

1) With proper OS architecture, the graphics driver isn't a big problem. Windows 7 runs it all in user mode (you don't have to reboot when you install a driver) so a crash isn't a big deal. The system just restarts the driver. The GPU still can halt the system of course, and piece of hardware can because they have DMA and if they go nuts can corrupt things, but the driver can't protect against that.

2) nVidia in particular but ATi as well are real good at writing drivers. They don't crash much, if ever. They are not going to be our source of instability.

Re:Vendors

[UnknowingFool]

Couple that with the fact that the end-user can't really upgrade their video hardware without throwing away the whole computer (excluding the prohibitively expensive Mac Pro)

That's generally true of all laptops. Very few of them allow you to update the video. Most of the time the video chip is soldered on the MB.

Re:Vendors

[Sir_Sri]

Last I checked, which admittedly was 3 or 4 years ago, apple had restrictions on what could go into the firmware on NVIDIA and ATI cards's in their machines. it's why you couldn't pull one of those graphics cards out and have it work on a windows box, or, somewhat more seriously, you couldn't replace your mac graphics card with a regular one and have it work properly under OSX (but it would work under windows).

I haven't tried lately however, not being a mac guy. I only knew of any of that (in somewhat more detail) from a former ATI employee I met at a conference who had worked on some of it.

Re:Vendors

[TheRedDuke]

Apple is the only major desktop manufacturer that doesn't have a user-accessible PCIe x16 slot in at least one of their entry and/or mid-range models.

Re:Vendors

[EvanED]

2) nVidia in particular but ATi as well are real good at writing drivers. They don't crash much, if ever. They are not going to be our source of instability.

Wait, what changed in the last couple years? Last I heard, graphics drivers were a very substantial cause of Windows crashes. This article says nVidia + ATI together was over 1/3 of reported crashes, and nVidia was responsible for 1.5 times the number of crashes that MS was.

Was that just a temporary situation caused by Vista's release? Or maybe things were different in the XP era when it was easier for a driver to crash a system?

Re:Vendors

[Spatial]

The debacle with Vista was a unique situation. It's not representative of the general trend.

Re:Vendors

[UnknowingFool]

None of the desktop models are user upgradeable in that aspect. This has been true since the introduction of the models.

Re:Vendors

[BitZtream]

Donno if its true, but it would seem like it ... and its a great trade off. Apple's nVidia drivers are about 3 billion times more reliable than anything nVidia itself has ever produced.

I'm happy with my 'slow' graphic drivers as I've never noticed them being slow. Until Steam learns how to deal with case sensitive file systems I doubt Steam will ever be a problem for me.

I play all sorts of stuff on my Mac and can't tell the difference between it and the Windows versions. I can say that the graphics update did seem to make my Mac run cooler while playing EVE Online but it doesn't seem to be any 'faster'.

I can play EVE in Win7 with the latest WHLQ drivers and get random crashes. I can play EVE under OSX and it works flawlessly ... considering its using Cedaga to run under OSX I'm fairly confident that I'm happier in OSX than I am in Windows thanks to Apple.

I don't know who, nor do I really care who makes my video card drivers, I do know that in MY experience, games in OSX are more reliable than they are in Windows.

Re:Vendors

[Nimey]

Vista had an all-new driver architecture, and (so I'm told) the vendors didn't have enough time between getting driver SDKs and Vista's release to write good stable drivers.

It's been almost four years since then, so drivers have had plenty of time to mature.

Re:Vendors

[sexconker]

The debacle with Vista was a unique situation. It's not representative of the general trend.

Uh, no.
The "debacle" with Vista was thus:

Vendors didn't write drivers.
When vendors DID write drivers, they sucked.

Video card drivers are shitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttty. This is a fucking trend you can count on.

Re:Vendors

[DurendalMac]

Um, no. That was due to the difference between Open Firmware on PPC Macs and BIOS on Windows boxes. There has never been any kind of "restriction" as there was even a dual firmware 9600 made by ATI that worked in both G5s and Windows boxes. Then it was due to the difference between EFI and BIOS. Even though Apple implemented BIOS compatibility in EFI not long after the Intel Macs came out, OS X still talked directly to EFI, so a standard PC card still wouldn't work without either flashing the ROM or, as we have now, software hacks to get OS X to recognize it.

Re:Vendors

[Khyber]

"That's generally true of all laptops."

Not even close. MXM has been in multiple laptop models. It's what's labeled/advertised as 'discrete' graphics.

Re:Vendors

[blackraven14250]

MXM is a rarity.

Re:Vendors

[beelsebob]

Just for reference, the EFI thing is only true of the primary card now. You can happily stick a PC graphics card in the second PCI-e slot, and OS X will detect and use it fine.

Hopefully as intel pushes to move all PCs over to EFI, the problem will disappear as more cards become EFI based or dual firmware, but that'll take a while.

Re:Vendors

[jythie]

Eh, I ran into the same problem with XP. The vast majority of my crashes were ATI related.

Re:Vendors

[neophytepwner]

Well at least by choosing not to drop OpenGL and go to DX10/11.

Re:Vendors

[drsmithy]

2) nVidia in particular but ATi as well are real good at writing drivers. They don't crash much, if ever. They are not going to be our source of instability.

I seem to recall a report from Microsoft not too long ago - drawn from the automated error reporting in Windows - showing that video card drivers are, by far, the single biggest cause of system instability.

Re:Vendors

[drsmithy]

Vista had an all-new driver architecture, and (so I'm told) the vendors didn't have enough time between getting driver SDKs and Vista's release to write good stable drivers.

They had plenty of time, they just didn't make use of it.

Re:Vendors

[DurendalMac]

Eh, not 100%. Some cards work as a secondary and some don't. You can use a PC card as a primary with a software hack, but again, it depends on the card.

And Netkas is God.

Re:Vendors

[mlts]

Stepping around the mess of who writes drivers, there is another item here, and that is best interests:

Video card makers want to just get drivers good enough to sell the card, hope that not too many people have crashes. Otherwise, drivers have absolutely no ROI and are a cost center to the PHBs. So, it is in the video card maker's best interest to do just enough to get the card working, and then move software development to the next card about to go on the store shelves. Any cash spent writing fixes for already sold products is cash wasted (thus speaketh the MBAs who have passed ITIL/ITSM, but forgot that class in real life.)

Apple wants their machines to work, and work perfectly each time, ever time. Because there are far fewer models of Macs than there are of PCs to be tested, Apple has far less money that needs to be spent on making sure the drivers work right with their OS, and the model of card is chosen from the ground up to be Mac-friendly with support for EFI BIOS.

So, there is a bit of a conflict of interest here. This does explain why Apple chooses to write its own drivers.

Re:Vendors

[coldmist]

Ya, and that was based on early results from Win7, where *all* video card drivers were beta, and nasty to play with.

Any more, when you update ATI drivers, it just blinks the screen as it restarts the driver, and you go on. No reboot needed. No lockups or issues either.

Re:Vendors

[Nadaka]

My first and only Ubuntu issue also was ATI related.

X crashes on startup with the default catalyst drivers on the 5770.

It's solvable, but annoying.

Re:Vendors

[Spatial]

I didn't mean to imply that they aren't bad. I know they are.

I was just affirming his last paragraph. GPU drivers for Vista were unusually bad for a while after it was released. The article's statistics aren't really applicable anymore.

Re:Vendors

[BitZtream]

Windows 7 runs it all in user mode (you don't have to reboot when you install a driver) so a crash isn't a big deal.

Uhm, live kernel driver updates is something windows has done since Windows 2000. 99.9% of the time in Windows XP can have its graphics drivers update on the fly and work fine if you just ignore the 'you must reboot' button.

The drivers are kernel mode, they always have been, they always will be, unless you want them to be slow as molasses due to the userland/kerneland context switching thats required.

Rebooting is not required to modify kernel drivers. Its as simple as issuing 'net stop' and 'net start' commands (or using the API for the same purpose) with the NT kernel. I know, I do it, I've written Windows kernel drivers.

2) nVidia in particular but ATi as well are real good at writing drivers. They don't crash much, if ever. They are not going to be our source of instability.

What world do you live on?

ATI has some of the shittiest most unreliable drivers on the freaking planet.

nVidia gives you a 50/50 chance of getting a good version that works reliably without a bunch of bugs. Half the time you score, the other half the time you're falling back to an older version of some sort so your games don't crash or your machine bluescreen anymore.

I'm not really sure where you get your information from, but you probably should not use that source anymore.

Re:Vendors

[jedidiah]

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

Rare trumps DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL AND NO ONE ELSE CAN HELP YOU by a wide margin.

That's the whole point of this "free market" and "competition" thing.

If Dell doesn't want to take care of me than ZaReason might.

Re:Vendors

[initdeep]

No.
It was based upon data gathered via error reports and sent to MS automatically and was in reference to the OEM and Retail release of Windows Vista.

And yes, the GPU companies had PLENTY of time to write new drivers and test them, they just didnt make very wise use of it.

This is also why the problems have slowed down considerably since the release of Windows 7.
It uses the same driver architecture as Vista for the most part making the creation of Drivers for Win 7 a much less painful process resulting in more stable driver releases.
However, Both ATI and Nvidia still have issues from time to time in their releases.

A quick look at any HTPC forum will show the problems they both tend to have.

Re:Vendors

[initdeep]

this would be true if they weren't writing unified drivers....

except both are.

Re:Vendors

[TheRaven64]

The drivers are kernel mode, they always have been

Not true. They weren't with Windows NT 3.x, for stability reasons. They were moved into the kernel with NT 4 because people complained about the performance. They've been complaining about the stability ever since. I ran NT4 and NT5 (Win2K, from back when it was NT5 beta 2 until several service packs after the release) and the only time either of them blue screened was in drivers written by Creative, ATi, or nVidia.

Re:Vendors

[TheRaven64]

That was due to the difference between Open Firmware on PPC Macs and BIOS on Windows boxes

And the OpenFirmware stuff wasn't Mac specific. You could pull a graphics card from a PowerPC Mac and drop it into a Sun SPARC and have it work nicely. More importantly, you could buy an OpenFirmware card from Apple for about a third of what Sun would charge for exactly the same hardware.

Re:Vendors

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'm glad you're having a great time playing EVE, but I don't think a seven year old game is really relevant to a discussion of the state of the art of graphics cards for gaming. Even a year or two is a long time in the world of graphics cards -- seven years is an eternity.

Re:Vendors

[drsmithy]

Not even close. MXM has been in multiple laptop models. It's what's labeled/advertised as 'discrete' graphics.

Does anyone actually sell MXM video cards in retail channels though ?

Re:Vendors

[Blakey Rat]

I seem to recall a report from Microsoft not too long ago - drawn from the automated error reporting in Windows - showing that video card drivers are, by far, the single biggest cause of system instability.

The point of Microsoft releasing that information was to show that many of the problems customers had with Vista (IIRC-- it might have been Windows 7 right at release) were due to bad third-party drivers, and nothing to do with the design of the OS itself. Just FYI, it turns out things change over time.

And the plan worked, it shamed both ATI and nVidia into fixing their buggy-ass drivers.

You also have to remember that Vista and Windows 7 can simply reboot the GPU driver when it crashes. So when they say "system instability", they're talking about "the screen goes black for 5 seconds, then comes back exactly as it was before". They're not (in the majority of cases) talking about computers locking-up or bluescreening.

If they ran the same report now, I doubt video driver issues would even be in the top-10. I could be wrong.

Re:Vendors

[MachineShedFred]

My XFX Radeon 5870 in a 2009 Mac Pro disagrees with you.

Granted, you have to flash the firmware to have full EFI support, but that's a trivial procedure for anyone that has any real interest in the fastest gaming card they can get.

Re:Vendors

[MachineShedFred]

The same was true of IBM RS/6000 workstations. OpenFirmware, front to back.

Re:Vendors

[ekgringo]

I'm sure they could tell that nobody was actually going to use Vista so they didn't bother trying.

Re:Vendors

[geekoid]

haha..ATI has a long history of sucking when writing drivers. This s why there is such a large market non official drivers. At least they where 3 years ago.

While crashing is an indicator of a bad driver, it's only one indicator.

Re:Vendors

[nine-times]

Uhm, live kernel driver updates is something windows has done since Windows 2000. 99.9% of the time in Windows XP can have its graphics drivers update on the fly and work fine if you just ignore the 'you must reboot' button.

Yeah, I think Windows 7 included some kind of support that allowed for the possibility of hot-swappable video cards.... or something like that...? I don't remember. But that's probably what's confusing the GP.

Re:Vendors

[oji-sama]

They had plenty of time, they just didn't make use of it.

I think they did. Considering that on my desktop I'm using a set of drivers that was released for my card in March 2009 when the support for my card ended. And I don't have problems with Aero nor the games that still run on my computer (tried some a bit newer things as well, but they were too old.

Of course, new hw architectures will bring new problems that may initially cause problems, but in general the drivers seem to have improved considerably.

Now if I only could find out why some flash games don't start on my Asus UL30VT. Which (relevantly) has horrible display driver support, and doesn't allow new drivers from NVidia to be installed. This, because there's also a Intel GPU.. Not yet sure if this is the last Asus or last NVidia I'm ever going to get. I needed modded drivers to get recent enough drivers to get CUDA working. Thanks to the modder, ASUS isn't helping much.

Re:Vendors

[Narishma]

They didn't have a choice. It's either OpenGL or invent their own proprietary API. I doubt Microsoft would let them use DirectX.

Re:Vendors

[jpmorgan]

You're mostly correct, but the GP is (mostly) right about user-mode graphics drivers.

WDDM drivers (i.e., native Vista/Win7 graphics drivers) are actually a pair of drivers: a lightweight kernel-mode driver for talking directly to the hardware, and a user-mode component for doing everything else (i.e., implementing OpenGL and DirectX primitives).

Re:Vendors

[cbhacking]

And now they've been (mostly) moved back into user-land. That's one of the things that makes the video driver interface in Vista and up so different, and is what makes it possible for the OS to recover a crashed video driver without it bringing down the whole OS (though the game might crash).

There's still a little bit of kernel-mode code, to handle things like DMA and actually writing to the GPU registers; userland Windows code still can't access the hardware directly. However, all of the actual video driver processing, the complex operations that are likely to cause crashes, were moved into userland. It does cost a little bit of performance loss (less than 5%) due to ring-level switches, but that's a fairly small price to pay for stability.

Re:Vendors

[Khyber]

http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/

There you go. Even have SLI-capable cards.

Re:Vendors

[Khyber]

MXM hasn't been a rarity for a LONG time. HP business-class graphics laptops use MXM, as do many Dell/Alienware laptops.

I'll wager at least 20% of laptops made today have MXM.

Re:Vendors

[Khyber]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

Forgot to add that.

Not as rare as you think.

Re:Vendors

[blackraven14250]

When there's about 7 vendors, with one or two laptops per vendor, when each vendor has 7+ models, isn't exactly a common thing.

Re:Vendors

[DaVince21]

I can say that the graphics update did seem to make my Mac run cooler while playing EVE Online but it doesn't seem to be any 'faster'.

This probably means that your CPU is working less hard because the graphics hardware takes over more of what was supposed to be accelerated before. Just because performance doesn't seem to differ doesn't mean it isn't different; your CPU probably was just able to keep up before. Unless there were still frame rate problems?

This means that you could probably play more heavy games now with better performance.

Re:Vendors

[Khyber]

I know of at least 6 HP models that use MXM, in both consumer and business class notebooks. These are usually found in all of the top-line models, but there have been at least 30+ models of laptop with MXM that I have personally repaired starting around 2006.

Also missing from that article - Dell, Alienware, Sony (the TV-sized all in one units use MXM or low-profile cards depending upon revision.)

That wikipedia article is rather out of date.

Re:Vendors

[Qhartb]

"Apple's nVidia drivers are about 3 billion times more reliable than anything nVidia itself has ever produced."
FYI, NVIDIA produces Apple's NVIDIA drivers. Sounds like you may have hardware problems on your Win7 box.

Re:Vendors

[toddestan]

Windows 7 uses the same driver model as Vista. The only thing that really has changed is there has been more time for vendors to push out better drivers.

Re:Vendors

[BitZtream]

...

You do realize it isn't the same today as it was 7 years ago ... RIGHT?

You do realize they've had 2 major graphics rewrites since it started ... RIGHT?

I highly doubt you could stand playing EVE with everything turned on with a card 7 years old. Unless you think those cards could handle HDR and the massive Bloom effects it uses.

EVE today is not EVE from 7 years ago. Neat thing about MMOs ... they evolve over time. You mean to tell me that WoW has the exact same graphics engine as it did when it was released? If so I feel sorry for the WoW players.

Re:Vendors

[BitZtream]

Actually, the graphics card was what was supplying the heat in the first place.

I can run high end math on the CPU using OpenCL all day long with no heat, the video card on the other hand is a firecracker.

For instance, theres a n-Body particle simulator as an example for using OpenCL to compute on the various processors included in your computer. If you run it on the CPU only, turns about 6Gflops and never heats up at all. Switch to the high end graphics chip (my laptop has 2, or so it claims, one high end, one low end for secondary displays) and it'll heat up to too hot to touch within a few minutes, but it'll also turn out 40-45Gflops.

Mind you, the Gflops aren't a real benchmark and are only relative to the simulation as far as what the numbers mean, but the graphics card and more importantly, the spot where the graphics chips' heat sink touches the case would roast you before this recent update, now it doesn't.

My guess would be is that its not using the graphics silicon the way it was meant to be used, rather than using some other tricks to accomplish the workarounds for hardware lighting occlusion.

Its worth mentioning that the Apple update was followed on the heels with an update to the Mac EVE client. They may have simply switched to a much more efficient built in hardware method of accomplishing the task.

Its also possible that the two events are entirely unrelated, I don't really know.

Re:Vendors

[BitZtream]

...

Its the same hardware, I dual boot. The hardware is the same, the software isn't.

Re:Vendors

[acey72]

Yup, and I'm old enough to remember the multi-page article in Byte (from when it was great) on the move to kernel mode drivers in NT4 and the ramifications of said move. As I recall the gist of the article was that Microsoft was being brave/foolish compromising the stability of NT for the sake of graphics performance, particularly on NT Server.

Finally time to get a Mac?

[PmanAce]

Last game I played on a Mac was a long time ago lol, the original Castlevania.

Re:Finally time to get a Mac?

[Hatta]

Castlevania was never on any Apple platform. You may be thinking of Castlevania on the Amiga. Or you may be thinking of Dark Castle on the Macintosh.

Re:Finally time to get a Mac?

[Stormwatch]

Or Castlevania under emulation.

Re:Finally time to get a Mac?

[LanMan04]

He's got to be talking about Dark Castle. That was THE Macintosh game to have back in the day.

Re:Finally time to get a Mac?

[PmanAce]

Yea sorry, that was it. Must have been over 20 years ago?

Re:Finally time to get a Mac?

[cjp]

They finally released a new Dark Castle recently! So much nostalgia . . .

New one seems pretty good, from the demo. As punishing as the original.

Call me crazy.

[Spazntwich]

But I think this is clearly AT&T's fault.

Re:Call me crazy.

[yoZan]

Well, the situation isn't THAT bad.

Re:Call me crazy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not very original are you.

I own a Macbook Pro, but I'm not a "Mac Person"...

[DigitalSorceress]

I own a Macbook Pro, but I'm not a "Mac person"; I have to say that I was quite happy when they released Steam for it, and am even happier that Apple's found a way to improve the video performance... not that it was bad, but better is well, better.

How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[Anonymous Coward]

How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower?

apple is trying to push games but the hardware is not there.

a $800 mini system with no board video is not a gameing system.

A $2500 system with a ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5 is way to much cost can get systems with dual high end cards at that price and with 4-6gb of ram as well.

a $1200 system with a ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB is weak and a 21" screen does not help.

$1,500.00 with ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB

at lest that better then $1700 for a 27" screen with the same video card.

$2000 for a system with ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB and 27" screen? the 5750 not a top end card and having to drive a 27" screen is not good for gameing.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[richdun]

You're not going to see a mid-range tower out of Apple any time soon (or ever). Their focus is in the mobile / "lifestyle" space now, with a fleeting lip-service to HPC. That's why the new Mini has an HDMI port (might as well call it what it is - Apple TV Pro), why the displays are going to laptop-companion status, and why the Mac Pro is getting ridiculous numbers of cores at each update.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[alen]

the screens Apple uses are IPS LED backlit panels that are better and more expensive than what dell uses. they aren't the same monitors. Dell had a 27" IPS monitor that was supposed to be made by the same company that supplies Apple and it was something like $800 which after you add up all the other components in a 27" iMac a Dell computer would cost more.

with apple you pay for crappy graphics and a nice monitor
with Wintel you can buy nice graphics but the monitor won't be as good

and OS X sucks for gaming compared to Windows 7

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[DurendalMac]

$700 Mini, and Apple is hardly pitching it as a gaming system beyond casuals.

In case you didn't notice, the Mac Pro is NOT a friggin' commodity box. It's a Xeon-based workstation. It's not supposed to be a gaming machine. It's supposed to be a production machine.

And honestly, I don't think Apple will ever seriously care about gamers. They're happy to pick up fence-sitters who would come over with more gaming possibilities, but the hardcore gamers are a small market and one with which there is almost no crossover with Apple's current market. Casual gamers won't care a great deal if they can't max out all of the details. Apple will make some improvements to help pick up that crowd, but serious gamers wouldn't consider a Mac in the first place and Apple knows it.

I would love to see an Apple midtower, but I don't see it happening.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[EvanED]

with Wintel you can buy nice graphics but the monitor won't be as good

Or... you can get a good monitor. And not have to throw it away when you upgrade.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[beelsebob]

The screens Apple uses are IPS LED backlit panels that are better and more expensive than what dell uses.

No they're not, the U2711 is the exact same monitor as is in the iMac... However, that makes the 27" iMac not too badly priced, given that Dell sells that monitor for $1099, and the iMac is $1699... Hell, you can even get a refurb for $1269... so that's $170 for a damn fast Core2Duo system.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[jythie]

*nods* yeah, I suspect Apple could benefit from better mid-range offerings. Though given how many manufacturers already crowd into that space, it could be argued that they simply do not fit in well there. Apple will never be Dell, and if they tried they would probably loose their shirts.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[jythie]

Not only are they a small market, they are market with a vicious hostility towards macs... getting converts from that group is unlikely to be economically viable.

That being said, they do service the 'less then hardcore but more then casual' market pretty well. I have been playing StarCraft2 on my 6 year old MacBook Pro pretty comfortably.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[vux984]

with apple you pay for crappy graphics and a nice monitor

And have to throw both away when you upgrade.

with Wintel you can buy nice graphics but the monitor won't be as good

Actually with Wintel you can buy whatever you like.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[LurkerXXX]

with apple you pay for crappy graphics and a nice monitor
with Wintel you can buy nice graphics but the monitor won't be as good

Bogus argument.

I buy IPS monitors with my Wintel machines.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[jchernia]

Really? I have not. I have the latest/greatest Mac Book Pro with i7, etc. I've gotten a *lot* of the "there may be a performance problem" message and finally turned my settings way down. I've been hugely disappointed considering this was supposed to be a badass laptop playing a "not quite hardcore" game. I remember playing the original Starcraft on a Pentium Pro running NT4 (ah DirectX 2, is there any OS you weren't on?)

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[DaVince21]

with Wintel you can buy nice graphics but the monitor won't be as good

With Wintel you buy your own monitor.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[ukyoCE]

Yep, make it a Shuttle-sized mini-pc with 1 PCI-E slot and 1 PCI slot, that'd be more than enough. When the options are a mac mini or a Mac Pro, the answer is Windows for gaming.

Any remotely serious gamer is going to buy their own video card and already has their own monitor.

There is no mac offering whatsoever for a gamer.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only are they a small market, they are market with a vicious hostility towards macs

Many of the gamers I can think of have a Mac laptop, and use their desktop for nothing but games. Some would ditch the laptop in a hurry if a Mac gaming desktop was available. Everyone else tends to go to gamers or other nerds for PC advice. Both of which would be likely to recommend a "cheap" Mac tower (even at several hundred more than a PC) if one existed.

But Apple seems to be afraid their users would switch from the "extra features and extra profit" offerings to a bare-bones bare-profit Mac, if given the choice.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[Anonymous Coward]

Current i5 Macbook Pro here, SC2 runs fine, and not anywhere near the lowest settings. How do you fail @ Mac? Seriously thats tough.

Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower

[indiechild]

Apple is all about what Steve Jobs wants. The day you'll get a hardcore Mac gaming machine is the day Steve Jobs becomes a hardcore gamer (read: never).

Agreed that the Mac Pro is not a gaming rig per se. Unless you have bucketloads of cash lying around.

This won't be overcome

[Pojut]

Until there is the following:

More high-end hardware choices (specifically video cards) for Macs

and

Mac Drivers written in a way that enable better gaming performance.

One or the other will improve things...but the problem won't truly be fixed until both happen.

Valve...

[epiphani]

Valve, if you're listening...

Please, please, please do steam and your games on linux. You've already made them POSIX and OpenGL, you're 85% of the way there.

I will buy every damn game you release on linux. I never want to run windows again, and if I can get portal and TF2 on linux, I won't.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

But making games is hard...

Re:Valve...

[lrdplatypus]

If steam ran on linux I'd lose my main justification for running windows. I do like Windows 7, but if I hadn't been able to pick it up at a highly discounted student price it wouldn't have been worth the money. Come to think of it, I've never paid full price for any version of windows.

Re:Valve...

[not already in use]

You've already made them POSIX and OpenGL, you're 85% of the way there.

More like 10%.

This is the problem with Linux: What company in their right mind would port to the platform that is both hardest to develop for and has the smallest user base? xorg, driver issues, distro inconsistencies all make porting games to linux an absolute nightmare. A lot of fundamental changes need to be made to desktop linux before it will really be taken seriously by anyone but Id. John Carmack even came out and said that Rage wouldn't be commercially supported on Linux, and that they'd provide an executable and let people fend for themselves as far as actually getting it to run.

Re:Valve...

[funtapaz]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-08-12-valve-on-steam-part-two-interview In the second half of that article (sorry, couldn't find it anywhere login isn't required) Doug Lombardi denies a Linux client is being developed.

"Q: Final question, and one I'm sure you're not super-keen to answer, but I promised one of our tech guys I'd ask it. What truth is there to rumours that you're also working on a Linux version of Steam?
Doug Lombardi: There's no Linux version that we're working on right now. ... "

Just thought it might be relevant.

Re:Valve...

[BitZtream]

Heh, the first problem is they'll have to make it deal with case insensitive file systems, which it doesn't or I wouldn't have to make 6 different symlinks and use disk images with case insensitive file systems just to trick its stupid ass into working.

What you'll get is a steam for linux ... that tells you that you have to install on a FAT filesystem or something retarded like that because they some how magically fuck up their software so it breaks on case-insensitive filesystems. How they manage to do so is beyond me since I write code that runs on both Windows and OSX for a living and it requires no actual effort to support both. The only way I have issues is if I do something stupid like changing the case of paths as I find them or not using defines so I have MyAppDir in one plays and myappdir in another place.

Basically, Valve writes code so poorly I wouldn't expect a USABLE Linux version anytime this decade.

Re:Valve...

[nine-times]

I used to play Portal under WINE. I don't know if that's a good enough solution for you.

Re:Valve...

[epiphani]

That's solved fairly easily: supported distros. Even roll your own distro - the valve gaming distro. Every other piece of software on linux has supported distros, or at least dependency requirements that have to be met. That's why the package management tools exist.

Hell Valve - hire me. I'll do it for you.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Valve should jump in with a major distro and only guarantee support for that one. Any distro would be insane to turn them away. I imagine Ubuntu would be a good fit.

Re:Valve...

[VGPowerlord]

This is the problem with Linux: What company in their right mind would port to the platform that is both hardest to develop for and has the smallest user base?

I'm not sure, but Sony has managed to convince companies to do it in the console market.

Then again, Sony was first during the previous generation...

Re:Valve...

[BitZtream]

Yes, adding another distro is a great idea ... if you want to run games from Value you have to use their distro. If you want to run EA games you have to use their distro.

Contrary to the common but ignorant belief that more Linux distro's is a good thing, they aren't. Linux's main problem to commercial adaptation is the number of distros and the problems dealing with inconsistancies between them (did you even read the post you're responding too?) ... adding more distros doesn't help the problem when the problem is already 'too many distros'.

And for what? A few thousand sales at the very most? When instead they can dedicate that same person to Windows and get 100,000 sales from their work?

Don't expect Value to start asking for your resume, you've already show you have absolutely no idea why they haven't done it already.

DLL Hell on Linux is actually far worse than DLL hell on Windows, package management tools or not, its not a problem they can solve, again, contrary to popular belief. If you think package management tools can solve the problem then you clearly don't understand the problem.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've already made them POSIX and OpenGL, you're 85% of the way there.

More like 10%.

This is the problem with Linux: What company in their right mind would port to the platform that is both hardest to develop for and has the smallest user base? xorg, driver issues, distro inconsistencies all make porting games to linux an absolute nightmare. A lot of fundamental changes need to be made to desktop linux before it will really be taken seriously by anyone but Id. John Carmack even came out and said that Rage wouldn't be commercially supported on Linux, and that they'd provide an executable and let people fend for themselves as far as actually getting it to run.

Explain to me how micro-companies and nerds in their basements can write shit like Nexuiz, Penumbra, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow, Flightgear, TORCS, Sauerbraten, etc. while the big guys can't seem to pull it off? Your argument and theirs is pure bunk. The only thing the big names do better is textures and single player campaigns neither of which have a damn thing to do with xorg, driver issues or distro inconsistencies.

Re:Valve...

[Beelzebud]

If I could play the Valve games, and if WoW supported a hardware cursor in Open GL, I'd ditch Windows 7 in a heartbeat. At this point those are the only things keeping on Windows.

Re:Valve...

[Beelzebud]

This is where they should just say "we officially support Ubuntu at this time, and you're free to try it out on other distros."

Re:Valve...

[jythie]

I imagine they are looking into it, but supporting Linux is a huge headache and I imagine they decided against it due to the complexities of not only supporting so many distributions but making things work with a rapidly changing kernel. Binary only releases for Linux have always been difficult for vendors to support.

Re:Valve...

[The MAZZTer]

Last I tried TF2 ran great under wine. Only problems were slight graphical glitches in some spots (I think ubercharged players were showing up wrong) and no DX9 support, only DX8. Other than that it ran surprisingly well, only slightly slower than on XP with the same system.

Re:Valve...

[mmaniaci]

Good idea, and they could even do it for just ONE distro (Ubuntu, obviously). They would get most of the viable Linux user base, and those that don't run Ubuntu could use the FOSS community to learn how to get Steam to work. The one thing about the Linux userbase thats different than Windows and OSX crowds is that they don't usually expect everything to work out of the box. A little hacking is actually quite fun, and theres always a tutorial somewhere online for whatever you want to do. This would not be difficult for Steam to pull off and they would be the first of their kind to cover The Big 3 (Win, OSX, Linux).

One more quick thought: Canonical would probably jump on the dev team for this port in a heartbeat. I'm sure they would see the benefit of Steam games on their OS.

Re:Valve...

[jedidiah]

No, the problem with Linux is that as soon as you start to talk about it the Lemming Trolls
come out of the woodwork to try and scare granny and Joe. Meanwhile, the Indie gamers are
quite happy to reap the rewards of porting to Linux and are willing to share their positive
experiences with everyone.

Re:Valve...

[Yunzil]

,i>Explain to me how micro-companies and nerds in their basements can write shit like Nexuiz, Penumbra, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow, Flightgear, TORCS, Sauerbraten, etc. while the big guys can't seem to pull it off?

The big boys can pull it off. UT 2004 had a Linux version. But it's usually not worth their time. Given the relative market share, I'm actually amazed Valve took the time to make Steam work on the Mac.

It's all about cost/benefit. If it takes 10% more effort to get a game to run on Linux, that's only going to increase your potential market by 1% or so, and most of those people are too cheap to buy your game anyway. Conclusion: don't bother. Spend your resources making the Windows version better.

Re:Valve...

[Blakey Rat]

I'm not sure, but Sony has managed to convince companies to do it in the console market.

Then again, Sony was first during the previous generation...

They also haven't convinced as many companies as they did with their last console. Microsoft's been consistently chipping away Sony's developers since Team Ninja left when the original Xbox came out...

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

Me to, what he said, please support linux I would rather knaw off my leg then go back to using windows!

Re:Valve...

[epiphani]

Actually, no, YOU don't understand. Ever built a linux distro?

I have. From scratch, using a combination of different tools. Working out an entire distro where no significant custom development is being done is a one-man job. The big distros do the heavy lifting. What exactly this "DLL Hell" which you refer to is, I don't really understand. The problem is simple, and it's been solved by a handful of distros in different methods. So, since "DLL Hell on linux isn't a problem they can solve", why don't you enlighten me to what this problem is?

You make it sound like linux is a terrible development environment - you obviously have very little experience with it. I don't know Valves' code base. But I do know linux development.

I'm not saying Valve should create another distro - I agree with you there. It's an option though, if they wanted full control.

Re:Valve...

[basotl]

Valve confirmed in May that they were going to bring Steam and the Source engine to Linux. I think that will make them the defacto commercial gaming platform for Linux at that time IMHO. In addition there is speculation that it will support native play of ID's games.

I don't have any Valve games currently but will purchase them when it comes to Linux.

Link to an article on it: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1
The article also cites several news sources on the topic. Unfortunately, there is no release date. It's a "when it's done project."

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like this?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1

Re:Valve...

[tibman]

I use to play all the Quakes and some UT in linux, at better FPS than windows 2k. You are crazy to think linux is "hardest to develop for".

When i was a kid i was working on my own ogl game for linux... AS A KID. I can post the sourceforge link if needbe.. but it's embarrassing to look at now, hah. But i relearned it as an adult from: http://nehe.gamedev.net/

Seriously, check out nehe. Look on the left side, down to the OpenGL Basecode section. You can see C#, GLX, Cocoa, and so much more there. You can download each version and compare what's more difficult.

Though i am still a big openGL fan, i have used C#+XNA for some projects. Really need to get back to some c++ though.

I'm curious, what fundamental changes need to be made to linux? Because it's had fantastic games in the past.. equal to the windows versions. Linux has only improved since then.

Re:Valve...

[pckl300]

...they'd provide an executable and let people fend for themselves as far as actually getting it to run.

Sounds like the Linux experience in a nutshell.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

The big boys can pull it off.

God, people on here are dense. Yeah, I get that. It was a rhetorical question. Duh, multi-m/billion dollar shops can make Linux binaries for their games. The GP was throwing up tired shit (xorg, drivers, etc.) that he doesn't have a clue about and using that as the excuse for why Linux doesn't have big developer game support. I was pointing out that the little guys with very little resources don't seem to have any problem at all so somebody is full of shit somewhere. Do you get it now or should I draw you a fucking picture?

Re:Valve...

[basotl]

As an example Google just released Gmail Video Chat for Linux today. The primary supported distro is "Ubuntu and other Debian based systems" and later RPM based distros.

Article: http://club-ubuntu.org/blogs/basotl/gmail-video-chat-now-available-on-ubuntu

You don't need to support every distro out of the box. Just a standard set. So I would agree with epiphani and some commercial software makers that supporting specific distros is a way to go.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

Making steam work on mac was the easy part. The hardest part was to port source to mac to help sold the idea of steam on mac.

Re:Valve...

[VGPowerlord]

Really? as funtapaz pointed out, Valve's Doug Lombardi confirmed earlier this month that they were not working on a Linux port.

Re:Valve...

[interval1066]

This is the problem with Linux: What company in their right mind would port to the platform that is both hardest to develop for and has the smallest user base?

Hardest to develop for? I hardly think that an OS that allows you direct access to the source code is particularly difficult to develop for. The user base for linux is kept artificially small because vendors aren't willing to write drivers for the non-dominant platform. Its that simple. In my mind Linux is one of the easiest platforms to write for. I'm not a python developer but even I can see that an os in which at least 60% of the desktop apps are written in a simple, interpreted language that can be picked up by kids can't be THAT particularly difficult to write for. No, the MONEY is with Windows, so that's where the vendors go. As soon as Steam goes linux I know a bunch of non-techies who will switch. VALVE, are you listening????

A lot of fundamental changes need to be made to desktop linux before it will really be taken seriously by anyone...

Really? What fundamental changes would those be? As dedicated Linux user I'd really like to know what I'm missing out of my desktop experience. If you're talking about a series of annoying messages telling me the action I'm about to take might be dangerous, I'd rather do without.

Re:Valve...

[tibman]

You're right about the distro's, i agree with you. But i'd like to challenge you on the last half.

Games can be written for multiple platforms. If your linux version only sells 1000 copies at 50$ and took 100 hrs to stack the engine on top of pre-existing linux libs. You are making good money from it. If you only made the windows version, you would be missing out on that linux money. Very little of your game should rely on the OS. However, if you choose microsoft only technologies, you have essentially removed your ability to create a multi-platform game. This goes for consoles as well. Good luck getting your (purely) C# game onto the PS3, it's not possible.

You wouldn't ship your windows game without the required external libraries, right? then why the hell would you do that with linux? Compile it all static and ship with the game.

Re:Valve...

[westlake]

Explain to me how micro-companies and nerds in their basements can write shit like Nexuiz, Penumbra, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow, Flightgear, TORCS, Sauerbraten, etc. while the big guys can't seem to pull it off? The only thing the big names do better is textures and single player campaigns. Your argument and theirs is pure bunk.

Nexuiz is based on the Quake 1 engine.

It is more than a little disingenuous to claim that it is only textures and single player that separate these games from the A list commercial titles.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nexuiz is based on the Quake 1 engine.

No, it is not based on Quake 1. It uses an engine derived from the one used in Quake 1. How many closed source big budget games do not make use of another companies engine?

It is more than a little disingenuous to claim that it is only textures and single player that separate these games from the A list commercial titles.

I'm posting on Slashdot, not writing a patent application. If you want the rest of the story, buy the rights.

Re:Valve...

[Beelzebud]

Not this again... Phoronix offers no quote from anyone at Valve, and the link they refer doesn't either. It's a rumor.

Re:Valve...

[MrHanky]

You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit. Should have previewed. Scratch:

No, it is not based on Quake 1. It uses an engine derived from the one used in Quake 1.

The rest stands.

Re:Valve...

[not already in use]

Good luck getting your (purely) C# game onto the PS3, it's not possible.

I don't know how familiar you are with game development, but nobody is using C# for serious game development.

However, if you choose microsoft only technologies, you have essentially removed your ability to create a multi-platform game.

Do you know why this doesn't matter? Because Windows has a vast majority of the market share. It helps that MS is also extremely developer friendly, and directX has surpassed openGL in just about every way.

You wouldn't ship your windows game without the required external libraries, right?

It goes far beyond just that. Across distros, the environments are different, directory structures are different, window managers and their conventions are different. Being able to neatly package up a game and have a reliable installer becomes a huge pain in the ass.

Having to field support calls, most of which would amount to you telling the person to get a supported video card and proprietary driver, along with trying to explain the process of installing it for their particular distro, would cost far more than any revenue that would be brought in by porting to linux in the first place.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!

My god a you a fucking idiotic fanboy.

Re:Valve...

[BitZtream]

The one thing about the Linux userbase thats different than Windows and OSX crowds is that they don't usually expect everything to work out of the box.

Thats funny, since the battle cry for Linux is almost invariably 'Windows is broken out of the box' or 'We're better than Windows'.

I know, I'll get marked as a Troll instantly ... but really, do you guys hear what you say when you make these comments? Linux users expect their OS to not work right ... except when you point this out as a reason for something else, they'll be 100,000 fanboys saying that the statement is wrong, or that its a feature or god knows whatever silly excuse seems to fit the bill.

Always talking about Windows being inferior and never realizing exactly why no one bothers to give Linux the time of day ... you even here are saying it like its a good thing that Linux users expect shit to be broken from the start ...

I really can't understand why you guys are so fascinated with it. I mean, I get liking Unix, it has its place but its not the only solution out there, yet no matter WHAT happens, you guys seem to keep thinking it is.

Even Windows admins aren't that retarded enough to think its the end all be all solution.

And no, just because you can login and open the ActiveDirectory manager doesn't make you a Windows admin and more than having root makes you a Unix admin.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be better is if Steam was just officially supported on Wine. I really don't care what libraries the program uses as long as it runs.

Re:Valve...

[twright0]

The Big 3 (Win, OSX, Linux).

I want steam on Plan 9, dammit!

Re:Valve...

[Blakey Rat]

I'm an idiotic fanboy for saying that Sony has fewer exclusives this generation than last. That's... fact.

Ok, fine. If citing a fact makes me a fanboy, I guess I'm a fanboy.

Re:Valve...

[not already in use]

I was pointing out that the little guys with very little resources don't seem to have any problem at all so somebody is full of shit somewhere.

The one who is full of shit here is you. There is an enlightening blog post by the creator of Braid (Jonathan Blow) where he reaches out to the Linux community asking how to overcome some of the deficiencies of xorg and various sound libraries. Here are some of the highlights in the comments from a small developer with very little resources:

I would say the biggest problems, development-tools wise, are the lack of a reasonable debugger, the slowness of gcc, the lack of the Visual C++ “IntelliSense” kinds of features, and edit+continue, and the extreme disappointment that is OpenGL 3.0. At this point Direct3D is a far, far superior environment for programming and debugging. And that is pretty lame, because when it started out it was horrible and sucky and OpenGL was obviously superior; but GL just lost ground, year after year, until we get where we are today.

However, the development tools are just not very good, and it turns out to be too big a sacrifice. As I was telling someone in a conversation the other week, it was hard enough (and very expensive) to make Braid on Windows, where the tools were a lot better. Braid could easily have failed and never been completed. If I had had to develop Braid on Linux, where it is so much harder to build software, it probably would have failed. You wouldn’t have gotten to play the game, ever.

So, that is too big a price to pay. I was willing to suffer some friction, to have to patch the source of whatever tools I was using in order to get them to do what I wanted. But the friction is just too great; the development tools are just too poor. I can’t take that much of a hit, because I would never get anything done.

What is it that you find good about the tools? It appears to me that they are about 12 years behind what I can use on Windows.

But this is exactly my point — I don’t want *more* functionality. I want *less* functionality, but that works better and allows me to do what I need at a high level of quality.

One of the big problems with Linux these days is that people are writing all kinds of random crap code when there aren’t even dependable foundations that apps can use.

SDL is not an appropriate API for a high-quality game that cares a lot about game feel; it’s better as an API for mini games or whatever. Which is fine. There’s a place in the world for that, but it’s not what I want for my game.

I could keep going, there is plenty more, but I'll just link you to the original post so you can check it out for yourself: http://braid-game.com/news/?p=364

tl;dr; Linux is a horrible platform to develop games for.

Re:Valve...

[geekoid]

Valve:
Please don't. You will never make those people happy, and you will have a deluge of Flavor specific problems. Please use you resource more widely.

Plus, you notice that person is already buying your games with window so you won't gain anything.

Finally, the post seems to only play your games; which I doubt.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could go and scrape blog posts on the 'net and find at least one that would support whatever bullshit you or any other idiot could come up with. Doesn't matter what it is. Does that constitute proof? Er, no. Except in the minds of imbeciles like yourself. Again, if people with shit for resources can write great games like Penumbra, et al, then games like Penumbra, et al, can be made by Valve, Blizzard, id and so forth. Do you get it, dummy?

Re:Valve...

[daeley]

What a factboy!

Er, sorry, carry on...

Re:Valve...

[Qzukk]

if you want to run games from Value you have to use their distro

OR... you use Valve's linker daemon (which will almost certainly be necessary in order to implement DRM) which links the games against the versions of the libraries Steam maintains, regardless of the libraries installed or not installed on whatever distribution that user is running.

Re:Valve...

[Fatal Darkness]

Supposedly they are: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/its-official-steam-coming-linux

Re:Valve...

[Kjella]

So please do tell... what is it that the few people working on WINE and open source games manage to do just fine that multi-million dollar companies can not? If I were to list the reasons, I don't think technical reasons matter much at all. If I was to guess at the list it'd be:

1) Gamers will have a copy of Windows and buy that version anyway
2) Open source people don't want closed source games
3) People who won't pay for their OS won't pay for a game
4) Tons of people running unsupported configurations will bother us
5) Technical difficulty of making a game supported on the top distro(s)

I'm hardly an expert at Linux development, but I know that it's not *that* hard. Unfortunately I also got some business classes, and I can see the business case being hard to make...

Re:Valve...

[VGPowerlord]

Hardest to develop for? I hardly think that an OS that allows you direct access to the source code is particularly difficult to develop for.

The OS has source I can view, great!

That makes it SO much easier to develop games for. After all, who needs APIs when you can view the OS source?!

(insert sarcmark here)

Re:Valve...

[VGPowerlord]

LOL!

My god a you a fucking idiotic fanboy.

These pesky things called "facts" are on his side. The "facts" show that the Xbox 360 has sold many more units than the PS3 has.

Re:Valve...

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Valve, if you're listening...

Please, please, please do steam and your games on linux. You've already made them POSIX and OpenGL, you're 85% of the way there.

I will buy every damn game you release on linux. I never want to run windows again, and if I can get portal and TF2 on linux, I won't.

I've heard a lot of people promise that if Valve ports their games to Linux, they'll never run Windows again. The same is true for me, but I'm going to make a promise they're more likely to care about:

Valve, if you port your games to Linux, I'll never buy a Windows game from any other company.

Re:Valve...

[Narishma]

You mean like they did with nearly all their previous games? The only game they've ever supported commercially was Quake 3 and it sold roughly the same number of copies as the Mac version. In fact they said last week at Quakecon that there were more people playing Quake Live on Linux than Mac. As for the different distributions, if a bunch of indie devs can make deb, rpm and tgz packages for their games, there's no reason bigger companies can't.

Re:Valve...

[TrancePhreak]

Convinced companies in the console market to switch to Linux? No.. Most PS3 dev does not take place in Linux, nor does the PS3 run Linux (remember they removed that option). They had merely been using OtherOS to try and get a tax break by selling as a computer instead of a console.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve games are already in the process of being ported to Linux and the Linux steam client is already in alpha testing.

Re:Valve...

[ProfessorKaos64]

No one even bothered to mention using Crossover? I use it on Arch Linux and also ubuntu for Steam and some of the popular games (TF2 for one) work fairly well on my 8800gtx despite occasion crashes every now and then

Re:Valve...

[Burpmaster]

DLL Hell on Linux is actually far worse than DLL hell on Windows, package management tools or not, its not a problem they can solve, again, contrary to popular belief. If you think package management tools can solve the problem then you clearly don't understand the problem.

You dispute other people's facts but offer no facts of your own. Meanwhile, your arrogant attitude is an obvious cover that's overcompensating for your complete lack of knowledge on the subject. I'll bet you congratulate yourself when nobody can tear down your argument even though you've advanced no argument to tear down in the first place. You are a troll.

Re:Valve...

[Jazzbunny]

I got the Humble Indie Bundle for my Ubuntu machine. All the games had different installers but they all worked just fine. If some small indie game developers can get their games working on Linux I can't see why big developers can't do the same. Something like quater of the sales came from Linux users despite it's not the platform any of the developers had in mind when they made their games.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

if I was a registered Slashdot user I would've modded you as a troll.

I am an avid Linux gamer. I play plenty of native games, and non-native games through WINE.
I don't know what xorg or driver issues you refer to. I know that the Open source drivers still have a long way to go, and that fglrx still isn't as good as desired.
I myself have had next to no issues with NVIDIA hardware and drivers (the only one I recall was the absolutely abysmal 2D rendering speed of Qt).

as for these 'distro inconsistencies', which would mainly center around the available versions of libraries and the package manager; is in my opinion a non issue.
Depending how involved Valve would like to be, there are two ways they can go about it.
Firstly they could release an installer that works on every conceivable distro, such as what NVIDIA does with their driver, or adobe with flash. (I can just see the steam-nonfree packages for debian already...)
The second is a more involved method. Basically you'd create an RPM version, a DEB version and a TAR.GZ version for everyone else. where the RPM and DEB versions would add an external repo to your current collection for updates. This is how google chrome and opera are currently set up.

I also think the parent is right. If they've ported steam to OSX, then the greater majority of the work has already been done. Assuming OSX and Linux have identical network stacks, then all that's left is the user interface.

If you're also going to argue that Linux Users have a natural stigma towards paying for software (or games). I'll let you know I've spend close to a $1000 over the past few years on games alone.

Re:Valve...

[tibman]

I'm not going to address all the things you said, but the last one struck me.

Pointing a customer to already existing documentation on how to get their GLX setup properly would cost far more than any revenue you could bring in? You are crazy. I can prove it..

Gentoo, my distro of choice.. google says the docs are here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml and here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ati-faq.xml

Or lets pick Ubuntu, google says here: https://help.ubuntu.com/6.06/ubuntu/desktopguide/C/hardware.html#graphics-cards

How much revenue was that? less than a minute of googling.

I would like to address some of your other points but i feel you really haven't taken the time to look into them yourself.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably referring to the variations of dependencies, version numbers and problems therein similar to Windows DLL problems of old.

Re:Valve...

[teg]

You wouldn't ship your windows game without the required external libraries, right? then why the hell would you do that with linux? Compile it all static and ship with the game.

The license of many of the libraries you use would prevent that - while LGPL doesn't prevent you from making proprietary applications, it does prevent you from linking statically as you shall be able to have the code for the LGPL parts and change those.

Re:Valve...

[Stephen Samuel]

The GP Post sounds like it's made by a Microsoft astroturfer.

Perhaps the reason why DLL hell isn't a problem that Linux people can solve is that it's a problem unique to Windows..... and Linux people aren't inclined (or even legally allowed to solve problems in Microsoft's Windows code base.

Re:Valve...

[VGPowerlord]

Convinced companies in the console market to switch to Linux? No.. Most PS3 dev does not take place in Linux, nor does the PS3 run Linux (remember they removed that option). They had merely been using OtherOS to try and get a tax break by selling as a computer instead of a console.

No, convinced developers to develop for "the platform that is both hardest to develop for and has the smallest user base."

Re:Valve...

[Rockoon]

Contrary to the common but ignorant belief that more Linux distro's is a good thing, they aren't.

I've said this before, both here on slashdot and elsewhere. The biggest competitor to Linux is another Linux.

Many Linux users do seem to get this. Some just refuse to accept the fact that its not Linux vs Windows.. its Ubuntu vs Fedora vs SUSE vs Mandriva vs Debian vs Gentoo vs Slack vs ... Windows

It isnt so much a bad thing that Linux competes with itself, because this sort of competition definitely has value, but it does really put the screws to commercial game development on top of a Linux flavor. Its like developing a game for multiple consoles, but without the enormous profit potential of consoles.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

"but i feel you really haven't taken the time to look into them yourself."

Exactly what I was thinking. If only I had mod points..

Re:Valve...

[drinkypoo]

DLL Hell on Linux is actually far worse than DLL hell on Windows

You have no idea what you are talking about, because old versions of libraries can coexist with new ones.

If you think package management tools can solve the problem then you clearly don't understand the problem.

Yes, a problem which doesn't exist on Linux because not only can you load two different versions of the same library at the same time, but you can load two different instances of the same library at the same time from two different paths. This is both because shared libraries are not registered and because the Unix runtime linker is more powerful than that in Windows NT. If you still don't understand that this problem doesn't exist on Linux, examine Loki_compat and then come back and talk to us.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

"DLL Hell" on Linux would be dependency hell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell Software repositories work great until the software you want isn't in the distro's repository. That's when dependency hell creeps in. The only time recently I've had DLL conflicts, was incidentally Cygwin. Two Cygwin applications were based on different versions of cygwin1.dll

Re:Valve...

[TrancePhreak]

I think it was more they convinced devs to develop for "the sequel to the console with the most units sold"

Re:Valve...

[Late Adopter]

If you're selling a large commercial closed software blob anyway, why not ship static libraries and park the whole thing in /opt? That, and GNOME and KDE menu entries, should be enough to make you compatible with 99% of Linux distros out there.

Re:Valve...

[interval1066]

Your reply is idiotic. Writing games for a black box is better? Your a dope, and not a programmer, Admit it.

Re:Valve...

[Yunzil]

Do you get it now or should I draw you a fucking picture?

You better draw the fucking picture. If it makes as much sense as your text, it'll look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Re:Valve...

[tibman]

You can statically link, but you have to distribute your object files to fullfill the needs of the LGPL.

Re:Valve...

[badkarmadayaccount]

Let's go shopping!
Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Valve...

[badkarmadayaccount]

I prefer VMS, you insenitive clod!

Re:Valve...

[DaVince21]

They're new with it, give them some time. Heck, you could even commend them for at least switching to WebKit.

Re:Valve...

[VGPowerlord]

I think it was more they convinced devs to develop for "the sequel to the console with the most units sold"

I never would have thought of that!

...oh wait, yes I did... in the GGGP post, I wrote:

Then again, Sony was first during the previous generation...

Re:Valve...

[VGPowerlord]

Your reply is idiotic. Writing games for a black box is better?

And yet, that's where the industry went.

The four largest development platforms are all black boxes: Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows/DirectX.

Your a dope, and not a programmer, Admit it.

My job title is IT Programmer/Analyst, working on business applications, but thanks for playing! Then again, my current employer is moving towards .NET (C# specifically) for all its newer (web) applications. The only ones that aren't are the ones that clients request be done in a different language. So, good luck convincing them to not develop for a black box.

Re:Valve...

[interval1066]

You said something about writing to an api is better. There is no lack of apis in linux. You're still an idiot.

Re:Valve...

[lucian1900]

Yeah, the general wisdom is "use and target Ubuntu/Debian". The effort to do so is minimal.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

^ lol some clueless linux fantard sysadmin who works at RIM, boasting he has created a linux distro from scratch as if thats important or cool in a post 1995 world, hee-hee, go back to writing your shitty ircd, and pretending anyone cares about irc.

Re:Valve...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not insightful, that's either trolling or masochist whining. It's not even good whining like http://wanderingstan.com/2009-12-11/65-reasons-mac-sucks is, just handwavery.

Re:Valve...

[barzok]

Pointing a customer to already existing documentation on how to get their GLX setup properly would cost far more than any revenue you could bring in? You are crazy. I can prove it..

Telling a paying customer "here, go figure it out yourself from these links which we claim no ownership of & can't tell you for certain will work" is shitty customer service.

The RTFM response may work on a "community" forum or a user mailing list, but not when you're calling up to get support for something you've paid for.

Re:Valve...

[tibman]

It's EXACTLY the same thing windows game support will tell you. Go to your vidcard vendor's website and get up to date drivers. Or update your directX. Or update your Windows.

Does Valve distribute the drivers for video cards? Does reading an online manual scare people versus someone read it for them over the phone?

Those links i posted are the OFFICIAL documents of the respective distros, not just some rabble on a forum. Does pointing a customer to AMD.com to update their videocard drivers offend you? Then why would the official distro docs?

Spare a talent for an OSX Leopard?

[spun]

BRIAN: Did you say -- OSX Leopard?
OSX LEOPARD: That's right, sir. (he salutes) ... sixteen years behind the bell, and proud of it, thank you sir.
BRIAN: What happened?
OSX LEOPARD: I was cured, sir.
BRIAN: Cured?
OSX LEOPARD: Yes sir, a bloody miracle, sir. Bless you.
BRIAN: Who cured you?
OSX LEOPARD: Jobs did. I was hopping along, when suddenly he comes and cures me. One minute I'm a Leopard with no games, next moment me productivity's gone. Not so much as a by your leave.

Re:Spare a talent for an OSX Leopard?

[Shadis]

Thank you sir..I wish I had some mod points today as I would have modded you funny for the good laugh I got at this...

Re:Spare a talent for an OSX Leopard?

[tom17]

Well, why don't you go and tell him you want games?

Re:Spare a talent for an OSX Leopard?

[spun]

OSX LEOPARD: Ah yeah, I could do that, sir yes, I suppose I could. What I was going to do was ask him if he could ... you know, just give me minesweeper during the week, you know, something playable, but not Steam, which is a pain in the arse to be quite blunt, sir, excuse my French but ...

I don't know if they write the drivers

[Sycraft-fu]

That would be rather complex, but their certainly control the drivers. They dictate what they do, what can be released, and so on. Net effect is the same.

However it is a larger problem than that, OS-X also doesn't have a very fast 3D layer. Despite what you might think, DirectX is fast and able when it comes to getting things to graphics cards. Also Windows provides a good way to plug in an OpenGL (or any other) API that can get at the hardware fast and low overhead. OS-X is not so good in that regard. Apple has never really had a gaming focus.

Perhaps this is going to change, we'll see. Apple has in the past talked up the games thing and hasn't delivered anything, but maybe they are more serious this time around.

Re:I don't know if they write the drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Apple has the best 3D layer of any OS! Or maybe you are holding it wrong?

Re:I don't know if they write the drivers

[yeshuawatso]

"Despite what you might think, DirectX is fast and able when it comes to getting things to graphics cards."

This is a point I sort of agree with if it weren't for some Linux implementations of OpenGL. Regardless, Direct3D still remains the best 3D implementation out there, not because it's inherently "better," but because MS has had over a decade of being the largest benefactor of 3D games for computers. Dominating so much of the market for so long gives you the deep pockets necessary to invest in improving your 3D APIs. OpenGL has gotten a back seat and "throw me a bone" type of treatment. It's not that it's not capable, its just incomplete. Furthermore, DirectX is an entire stack while OpenGL is just one component.

For instance, DirectX has video overlay, 3d, sound, network, and input in one pretty, albeit expensive, package. OpenGL has...well Graphics. You have to plug in modules for everything else. While an OpenGL route allows greater flexibility and portability, DirectX offers conciseness, streamlined api, at the cost of a single, albeit largest, computer platform. I'm not sure why Apple nor the Linux crowd have adopted a streamlined multimedia layer that combines everything into a nice package. Apple has done a lot of this (especially for iOS) but not enough for the PC game making elite to take it seriously, yet. If Apple were to partner with Sony and port their OpenGL ES implementations from the PS3 to OS X, plop in a consistent library for sound and input, then maybe they'll be taken seriously as a gaming platform. Until then, Valve is still alone on this one.

Re:I don't know if they write the drivers

[Narishma]

Why would Apple care about Sony's OpenGL ES implementation? It's slow and nobody uses it on the PS3.

Mobile chips

[gilesjuk]

All Macs except the Mac Pro use laptop components for the CPU, chipset and 3D chip.

I'm guessing those who are comparing performance are running big box PCs with big noisy fans, PCIx 3D cards (maybe two linked together).

Re:Mobile chips

[Dog-Cow]

I'm guessing you're a complete and utter moron. And my guess is correct.

Those complaining are complaining about the games performing better ON THE SAME Mac running Windows.

Re:Mobile chips

[alen]

not true anymore. if you look at Intel's CPU chart all iMacs are running desktop versions of the CPU. they even have desktop hard drives

Re:Mobile chips

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing those who are comparing performance are running the games.

FTFY

Re:Mobile chips

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up, mod GP down. On the same system, performance in MacOS was generally 40-75% of that found in Windows. Note the excellent anandtech comparison, for instance. Hopefully this update puts a significant dent in that gap.

Re:Mobile chips

[DurendalMac]

Wrong. The current iMacs use desktop CPUs and a desktop chipset. The 3D chip is on an MXM card, though. The 5750 in the iMac is actually a mobility 5850, which itself is largely just a tweaked 5750 in the first place.

Re:Mobile chips

[idontusenumbers]

PCIx, not to be confused with PCI-X or PCI Express (PCIe or PCI-E).

Re:Mobile chips

[Ryanrule]

if the price is equal, the comparishttp://games.slashdot.org/story/10/08/20/177250/Steam-Prompts-OS-X-Graphics-Update#on is valid. how "thin" your desktop computer is doesnt count as a valid metric.

Re:Mobile chips

[mikestew]

Who the hell modded this insightful? If there's a laptop using i7-860 CPUs (just using the example of what's in my own machine), I've not seen them. I don't think the Intel 5 series chipset goes in laptops, either. But, yeah, the ATI 4850 in the late '09 iMacs is the mobile version.

Re:Mobile chips

[skeletor935]

Yes. Starcraft 2 runs like a champ on my MBPro in Windows XP with all the settings on high, and it runs like shit in OS X with all the settings on low.

Re:Mobile chips

[oji-sama]

Also, the comparison is rather funny. He is basically complaining that it's not fair to compare Macs and PCs as the PCs are more powerful. (Although he qualifies this with size and noise...)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Well a couple of things

[Sycraft-fu]

1) Are they POSIX? I think it is more likely they are Cocoa since that is how Apple prefers apps to be.

2) Can enough copies of Linux handle the GL calls needed? iD has talked about this that more or less only the nVidia closed drivers provide a full, complete, "just like on Windows" OpenGL implementation that modern games need, and it seems OSS types hate those. So if they ported their games, would they work properly, or would they require a bunch of modification to work?

3) Would Linux people buy them? The Linux crowd is notoriously of the opinion that software should be free both as in open code but also as in not having to pay. Are there enough paying customers to justify the man hours needed to port and support it?

Re:Well a couple of things

[xMilkmanDanx]

1) Are they POSIX? I think it is more likely they are Cocoa since that is how Apple prefers apps to be.

just getting away from direct x and compiling on a different platform is a big step.

2) Can enough copies of Linux handle the GL calls needed? iD has talked about this that more or less only the nVidia closed drivers provide a full, complete, "just like on Windows" OpenGL implementation that modern games need, and it seems OSS types hate those. So if they ported their games, would they work properly, or would they require a bunch of modification to work?

most people who game are by needs pragmatists and not OSS purists. all (almost all?) games on steam are closed source.

3) Would Linux people buy them? The Linux crowd is notoriously of the opinion that software should be free both as in open code but also as in not having to pay. Are there enough paying customers to justify the man hours needed to port and support it?

as to whether there's a market, that's harder to say. would be that there's a fair number of windows installs (several million) that would not be booted into if linux handled gamers needs.

Re:Well a couple of things

[losinggeneration]

1) The games themselves will more or less not care about Cocoa because they'll use the least that they can to get an OpenGL window open and usable.

2) Non-issue, if it's closed source and the person who buys it complains about the driver being closed but the game not, there are bigger issues that person needs to work on. The 100% FOSS users obviously aren't going to want either. So again, they're not going to complain that a closed source game needs a closed source driver to work. As for the closed drivers themselves, AMD/ATI are descent (if you have hardware that they support) & nVIdia's Linux drivers are quite good. The OpenGL renderer for the games will likely need little to no changes to run on these drivers.

3) Short answer: yes http://www.wolfire.com/humble http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/ Long answer: more than likely. The most common complaint I've heard over the years from Linux users is the lack of commercial/popular games that are only available on Windows (or Windows and OS X)

Re:Well a couple of things

[TheRaven64]

Are they POSIX? I think it is more likely they are Cocoa since that is how Apple prefers apps to be.

If you want to write an app that integrates well with the OS X desktop, Cocoa is the only serious choice. Games, however, do not fit into this category. The Steam front end itself probably does (although it doesn't need to integrate particularly well, so it may use something like Qt), but games just grab a full-screen graphics context and then they're OpenGL for output. I don't know what they're using for input on OS X, but input handling code is pretty small.

Anything for interacting with the filesystem is more likely to be POSIX. Even if it is Cocoa, it will be in the Foundation framework and is almost certainly supported by GNUstep.

Graphics and audio will most likely be OpenGL and OpenAL, respectively. Both of these are supported on *NIX. Games are about the easiest apps to port, as long as you avoid DirectX (or use it via an abstraction layer), because they require so little in the way of system integration.

Re:Well a couple of things

[DaVince21]

2) Can enough copies of Linux handle the GL calls needed? iD has talked about this that more or less only the nVidia closed drivers provide a full, complete, "just like on Windows" OpenGL implementation that modern games need, and it seems OSS types hate those. So if they ported their games, would they work properly, or would they require a bunch of modification to work?

NVidia and ATI obviously spend most of their time writing the drivers for Windows. We can already see that porting Steam to Mac is helping both Apple and the graphics card manufacturers improve their drivers in this department (that includes implementation completeness). The same would happen when Steam is ported to Linux, I'm sure, and as more people get interested in gaming/developing games for the system, the drivers would finally get to a point where they are good and stable.

3) Would Linux people buy them? The Linux crowd is notoriously of the opinion that software should be free both as in open code but also as in not having to pay. Are there enough paying customers to justify the man hours needed to port and support it?

A substantial part would, because Wine is a popular project that has a main focus in getting games to run well (mostly because of popular demand).

I think this is exactly what Linux needs to get a good push in the graphic drivers/performance department.

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[alen]

to be fair the Mac Pro has Xeons and not consumer level CPU's. It's priced in line with other workstations from Dell/HP.

it's the imac's. Apple wants you to pay for an expensive LCD screen and gimped the graphics. my theory is that it's psychology. when i did help desk all the lusers thought the computer was their monitor. so apple did just that except they sell you a very expensive monitor that looks nice so you feel good about spending $1500 on a computer when most people think $500 is too much

TF2 runs under WINE

[b00m3rang]

I can get about 30 FPS, too.

Re:TF2 runs under WINE

[Beelzebud]

That is pretty bad. A native client would run full speed. Sometimes Wine just doesn't cut it.

Worked for me! (Now with technical details.)

[aberkvam]

It's linked to from TFA but Valve's technical article Game Performance Improvements in Latest Mac OS X Update gives a lot of insight into the OS X driver situation.

Personally, I have a MacBook Pro with a NVIDIA 9600 chip. I was kind of disappointed when I got StarCraft II. I had to run on one of the lowest resolutions with medium defaults. Increasing any setting made the game close to unplayable when complex graphics were being displayed (such as the lava level). Then I updated the graphics drivers. I was able to bump to the highest supported resolution and bumped the graphic settings to high defaults without noticeable slowdowns. I had to go to the ultra defaults before I started getting slowdowns and warnings.

I haven't had a chance to really sit down with it and play for an extended time (damn real life...) but there certainly is a huge improvement. The urge to upgrade is fading...

Re:Worked for me! (Now with technical details.)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's linked to from TFA but Valve's technical article Game Performance Improvements in Latest Mac OS X Update gives a lot of insight into the OS X driver situation.

Personally, I have a MacBook Pro with a NVIDIA 9600 chip. I was kind of disappointed when I got StarCraft II. I had to run on one of the lowest resolutions with medium defaults. Increasing any setting made the game close to unplayable when complex graphics were being displayed (such as the lava level). Then I updated the graphics drivers. I was able to bump to the highest supported resolution and bumped the graphic settings to high defaults without noticeable slowdowns. I had to go to the ultra defaults before I started getting slowdowns and warnings.

I haven't had a chance to really sit down with it and play for an extended time (damn real life...) but there certainly is a huge improvement. The urge to upgrade is fading...

Thats because you're part of apples target market, which lets users pay for all the expensive "cool" hardware to actually not use it.

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[gnasher719]

Apple wants you to pay for an expensive LCD screen and gimped the graphics.

I have never, ever, ever heard the word "gimped" until quite recently it apparently become fashionable to use the word in connection with Apple products. Why has nobody ever complained that Microsoft gimped the computing experience for whole generations of customers, producing one gimped operating system after the other, the laughable gimped brown Zune that nobody wanted, the XBox with its gimped power cables, shall I continue?

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[Moridineas]

You know, FWIW, the vast majority of computer users don't need to upgrade their video card, and don't upgrade their video card. I play a decent number of games on my media system PC and so far everything I have runs just fine on my Geforce 8800gt that must be about 3 years old by now. The reality--the people that REALLY care about the tiniest framerate differences, the hardcore gamers, etc--would never buy a mac in the first place. Back in highschool it was really fun to whip out the framerates and optimize for tiny differences, but, IMHO, with today's hardware it just doesn't matter to me or most people anymore. So, for most other people, it's fine. Yeah, mac hardware is more expensive, but I don't think I've ever seen anybody deny that. It also tends to have very good support from Apple and lasts well in my experience. I don't begrudge you your choices, why do you care so much what choices other people make?

What does Flash performance have to do with Apple? I also think your assertion is wrong. Flash does suck, but what else is new. It's supremely ironic to me how many geeks have come out as roaring advocates for Flash since the Adobe/Apple battle started, when before that most self-respecting techies (rightfully!) loathed Flash.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's some food for thought: Macs were never originally intended for gaming. I was a PC guy for years (about 12 to be exact) and I can honestly say that switching to Mac was the best choice I've ever made (regardless of how much I still love PCs). Why? Because everything simply works without having to persuade it to do so; speaking in terms of both hardware and software. I blame the thousands of different hardware manufacturers who are making it nearly impossible for Microsoft to avoid the many obvious issues they've had with their operating systems over the years. I see a lot of Mac bashing on Slashdot, and honestly most of it is unsolicited garbage brought about by sheer ignorance. And another thing that's slightly off topic, if I hear one more person bash Mac "security" I'm going to explode. Go make a Mac virus already or shut up. If you're going to bash Mac security, you may as well include almost every Linux distribution in your "bash".

Is it really that big of a deal?

[scosco62]

Is this as tightly coupled as this article states; or is this coincidential? I mean, I guess I get the push to Mac update - but c'mon, firmware patches fundamentally signifying a shift in cultural priorities....seems a bit weak tea, to me, at least. I agree with the Steam update being important; it's the subtext that ain't resonating with me...

Re:Is it really that big of a deal?

[BitZtream]

Apple did fix some serious flaws in handling hardware lighting occlusion. These were difficult to track down and resolve and will effect a lot more than just Steam and StarCraft II, but Value was the one pushing to get them fixed as it did effect Steam so much.

Unfortunately, Apple didn't push back on Valve and make them fix their retarded fucking software so it can deal with case-insensitive file systems like any normal piece of software can. As a result, I still won't be buying any Steam games since I still can't run it without 6 symlinks, and a drive image mounted and formated with a case insenstive file system.

The upside is, the update did make my machine run noticeable cooler when playing EVE online. So thank you very much Valve and Apple, but Valve, your still welcome to go fuck yourselves until you learn how to write code like professionals.

Re:Is it really that big of a deal?

[Moldiver]

You know that case-insensitiv is the norm on macs? It's not the apps fault that you use a different fs.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[DurendalMac]

for years all the isuckers said how OS X is better and faster than bloated Windows and now they are complaining

Yes, because games are the only way to measure the performance of an operating system.

and Flash still sucks on Mac's even though it runs just fine with hardware acceleration on a $299 toshiba laptop i bought as a gift

Except that 10.1 was a huge improvement and many Macs now support hardware accelerated Flash.

Also, if you think that gamers account for 90% of the market then you're an even bigger fucking idiot than the rest of your post would suggest. Here's a hint, kiddo: Serious gamers are a small percentage of the overall consumer market. Casual gamers are a much larger component, and casuals don't usually put gaming as their first priority, nor do they care if they have the latest and greatest video hardware.

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, at this point, it just goes without saying

I am waiting for the iMac II

[LWATCDR]

It comes with slots and will be available in platinum!

Re:I am waiting for the iMac II

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no longer a Mac user, but I sure remember the *original* Mac II. What a great (and fucking expensive!) machine at the time. I picked one up years later for next to nothing, but the 68020 with no MMU was a bit lacking, so I soon replaced it with a IIcx (identical to the II's successor, the IIx, but in a smaller case and with fewer slots). I used the hell out of that IIcx, first running a local BBS (anyone remember those? haha) and then as a web/file server running NetBSD well into the late 90s. It was even still working perfectly when I sent it to its grave.

The original Macs certainly had some quirks, the OS needed work, and they were lacking in software. But the hardware in the old Mac II lineup was damn solid.

True.

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

If mac users want blistering performance, just like a pc user, they have to pay to upgrade their card. The only differance is I can get a cheaper Dell, and slap in a 5870 or whatever, and be on the A game when it comes to frame rates.

In a Mac, you have to first kneel down, give old jobs a kiss, Pull out your now maxed credit card and buy a the same 5870, plug it in, viola.

Or, you can build your PC like almost all gamers do (even custom ordered counts here).
get the best $/Perf ratio possible and smoke a mac like a joint in a college dorm room for about 2/3rds the cost. Think getting Muai wowie, or Blueberry yum yum for the price of mexican dirtweed.

Granted, Macs have their place. Many people are technophobic. Don't want to plug in a motherboard, don't want viruses & malware. Want a true plug & play experience. I'm not too prideful to admit it, they get that w/ MAC, and that kind of experience is worth the price.

Now, Microsoft is finally closing the gap, Windows 7 is a GREAT product from my experience. No bluescreens yet, and I'm on cutting edge hardware & 64bit. Shit just works, keeps working, and is 2x faster than any Mac I've ever heard about. (My machine isn't a fair comparison since I got a lot of parts / software for free)

Re:True.

[jythie]

I disagree that most mac users are 'technophobic'. I see the lions share of our engineering students using them now, and many CS students have macs that dual boot or just go with linux boxes.

And yes, you can get a cheaper Dell. You can always get a cheaper Dell. I can go down the local korean computer shop and get something cheaper then that. There will always be cheap solutions that have the same 4 or 5 basic metrics people use to compare systems when they are lazy.

I have been building custom game rigs since the 80s and am still running one when my MacBook is not sufficient. I agree, you can get the best $/Perf out of role your own, but it also eats time. I spend more time maintaining my windows gaming rig then all my OSX machines put together, which when I only have a few hours for gaming per week can really add up. Next non-trivial part that fails (last one was just the CMOS battery) I will probably be simply replacing the machine.

One of the 'places' where macs excel is for people who just want (or only have the time) to use the computer, not treat the computer as part of the experience.

I will agree though, having some mac offerings in the midrange (Mac Pros are serious overkill for gaming) that you can swap out the video and sound systems would be nice.

Re:True.

[ooshna]

I have been building custom game rigs since the 80s and am still running one when my MacBook is not sufficient.

I miss the days of slapping an IBM compatible sticker on a case and being able to call it a game rig too.

Re:True.

[Americano]

Many people are technophobic. Don't want to plug in a motherboard, don't want viruses & malware

Are you suggesting that one must be a technophobe to "not want viruses and malware"? :)

The stuff you've listed isn't about "technophobia," it's about "not wanting to spend several hours a week dicking with settings &/or virus scans on your computer." One need not be a technophobe to have things other than building their own computer rigs that they'd rather be doing.

Re:True.

[Ironhandx]

In my experience, many CS and Engineering students these days sort of just fell out of the MBA class because they thought they would make more money with the CS or Engineering Degree.

Anecdotal but:

Of the 30 people I started my programming curriculum with, about 6 were competent, intelligent genuinely interested computer geeks. This includes 2 that may not necessarily be dubbed "smart" all of the time but they worked hard and were genuinely interested in what they were doing. The rest were a mixture of people who should have been doing MBAs(or getting a step ahead of the game and applying for that supervisor postion at McDonalds or Wal-Mart right away) and people who were taking majors in leisurely studies. This leaves you with a majority of folks that would be highly susceptible to the marketing tactics of apple, and there you have your majority of CS/Engineering folks now using Macs.

Re:True.

[jythie]

Depends on which univ you are talking. The one I am at, people who fall out of the MBA programs would not be likely to surive even the first year of the engineering program, if they could even get into the dept in the first place.

*sigh* I am constantly frustrated by the 'if someone likes a mac, they must have been manipulated into it' meme. Most of the students (undergrad, masters, and PhD) student I know with macs use them because they are low maintenance and good for getting work done. They are good solutions for their situations and tasks... esp among the PhD students who really just do need a computer that works, lets them do their research, and does not burn time with fiddling or maintenance. Mac can be very good for that group.

Re:True.

[geekoid]

" I spend more time maintaining my windows gaming rig then all my OSX machines put together"

thats' really an indication of your skill, not the platform.

Seriously, I have three gaming machines, one XP and 2 win 7. I MIGHT spend an hour on maintaining them every week.

And yes, I role my own with the exception of the Alienware that was a gift from somenoe who wasn't using it anymore.
For the record, from the time I get home until windows is installed is 30 min. Plus I don't get dinged for upgrades.

"Pros are serious overkill for gaming"
That's a stupid statement. That just means they will be used for gaming longer. Unles the ones you buy are alsways magically over powered.

Also there videos drivers suck.

Re:True.

[geekoid]

Na. I've seen intrend away from that type od student.

OSX is a good choice for engineering. There is a lot of power there.

Why do I doubt you know all those student well enough to make the determination? or right, your post is chalk full of Ad Hom fallacy.

Re:True.

[dwinks616]

Perhaps, but then you spend several hours a week searching for Mac/Linux variants of Windows-only software that you want to use.

Re:True.

[jythie]

*shrug* and I might spend an hour maintaining my OSX machines per month, if that... and set up time from 'install new hard drive' to 'play games' tends to be pretty short.

And yes, Pros are overkill. Buying one for gaming would be like getting server or workstation....

Re:True.

[smidget2k4]

This is precisely why I own a Mac laptop. I'm a graduate student in CS, and with my Macbook as my primary work computer, I need a *nix compatible operating system but don't have time to dick around for 2 days getting an Xserver working with a new graphics card (though Ubuntu has made this a late easier than a few years ago). I have a cheapo desktop PC/server that I use for that.

Using Windows would be almost impossible for any serious computing when all high performance clusters I've come in contact with at various universities use Linux or Solaris and I need to test the code locally before launching a job. Desktop Linux, up until recently, was an unstable option.

(Note: I do now own a netbook with Ubuntu 10.04 UNR on it and it is a pleasure to use for writing in a coffee shop or somewhere I'm not guaranteed a power outlet).

Re:True.

[Tikkun]

I MIGHT spend an hour on maintaining them every week.

That is more time than I spend maintaining all the *nix boxen in my house.

I spend all day supporting Windows machines at work, the thought of doing more when I get home isn't a pleasant one.

Re:True.

[Americano]

Such as?

If you're going to throw this tired canard out, you should at least spend a moment making it sound slightly authoritative.

Re:True.

[Ironhandx]

The meme isn't true for some, but it is true for the majority. I've lost track of how many people I've met that bought a mac "because its pretty and the guy on the TV said it was way better than a PC"

Re:True.

[Ironhandx]

Its very easy to tell if someone is interested in what they're doing or not when you spend 6 months sitting 20 feet away from them. Its also pretty easy to tell how gullible someone is. Hint: Marketing works really really well on gullible people.

The engineering bit I've gotten from a few friends. So again, anecdotal, but I already cited that part.

Though, if someone wants to use a Mac thats entirely up to them. There are superior choices out there for ME but perhaps for them thats the best thing.

Re:True.

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience Macs fail more often than any PC I have built.

My media PC is over 10 years old, my arcade machine system is 8 years old and and media PC is 6 years old. Not a single problem with any of them. What kind of shit components are you using for your systems?

I have two Dell laptops. One is 12 years old and the other is 8 years old. Both still running strong.

Meanwhile I have 3 dead iPods, 1 dead iMac, and one dead iBook. Similar stories from everyone I know with Apples. It seems half the time their machines are "in the shop." Apple? What a joke.

Re:True.

[Bryansix]

I will agree though, having some mac offerings in the midrange (Mac Pros are serious overkill for gaming) that you can swap out the video and sound systems would be nice.

Exactly! This is the problem. A Mac Mini is a good value but if I buy the equivalent Dell (which I did today) I get a case I can open and upgrade. In order to get that with a Mac I have to spend almost twice as much. This is useful for things like upgrading the internal storage or getting an update video card two years down the road.

Re:True.

[LoRdTAW]

I spend more time maintaining my windows gaming rig then all my OSX machines put together, which when I only have a few hours for gaming per week can really add up.

I am not trying to be an asshole but what maintenance are you talking about? It sounds like you are talking about a high performance sports car rather than a computer. Other than applying a few windows patches here and there I honestly just turn my system on and off. And yes I play games, allot too.

Same goes for the Linux box.

Re:True.

[ToasterMonkey]

"Pros are serious overkill for gaming"
That's a stupid statement. That just means they will be used for gaming longer. Unles the ones you buy are alsways magically over powered.

ECC memory, and Xeon processors are stupidly overkill for gaming. Mac Pros are workstations.

Re:True.

[dfghjk]

"One of the 'places' where macs excel is for people who just want (or only have the time) to use the computer, not treat the computer as part of the experience."

You have that backwards. For many Mac users, the computer itself is the experience.

Re:True.

[Divebus]

"thats' really an indication of your skill, not the platform"

I'd have to side with @jythie on this one.

I came from a video post production house heavy with Mac workstations and now work at a major network channel that's very Windosey. My god - I truly can't understand the world's sad devotion to Windows. I hardly ever heard from the 60 Mac users at my last job and now I spend most of my day keeping a few dozen HP 360 and 380 shitboxes connected, booted and trying to finish the work you ask them to do. There's always something falling apart on these systems and they're slow as ass.

There's also a Mac graphics department with 12 machines. I MIGHT spend an hour a MONTH maintaining ALL of them put together.

My two year old 8-core Mac Pro at home can run rings around the 12-core HP 380 G6 server at work. On top of that, the people here THINK THAT'S HOW COMPUTERS ARE SUPPOSED TO WORK and keep buying them. Cripes.

On top of that, I'm sure I only spent half the money on all the Mac servers and workstations as they spent on this stuff.

There's something to this OS X thing. I wouldn't write it off so fast.

Re:True.

[lucian1900]

Macs ARE overpriced. I've used one for 2 years now and they have truly horrible build quality and some really stupid design decisions (2 USBs and 2 firewire on MBP 4.1). A high-end Dell would've been much better, but I shouldn't look the gift horse in the mouth.

Re:True.

[lucian1900]

This very much depends on what software you use and how you look for it. For OS X I sometimes have trouble finding good free/cheap software, but that's almost never an issue on Linux. It's a big issue for me on Windows, though. Others may have different needs, but it's rarely an issue nowadays.

Re:True.

[TheBig1]

Who is viola? And why don't you just plug the card in yourself, instead of asking her to do it for you...

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[DarkXale]

Wait, you've never heard the word gimped?

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[Pojut]

Why has nobody ever complained that Microsoft gimped the computing experience for whole generations of customers

In addition to various iterations of Linux, I've been using Microsoft operating systems for years...no complaints here (besides the obvious Windows ME, etc)

producing one gimped operating system after the other

Gimped operating systems that 1. Are the most widely used in the world, 2. Dominate the corporate environment, and 3. have the most software available.

the laughable gimped brown Zune that nobody wanted

The Zune is actually a decent MP3 player. I'm a Creative Zen guy myself, but a Zune would still get the job done quite well. Much like iPhone haters, the majority of Zune haters are people that have likely never used one.

the XBox with its gimped power cables

???? Wait...so, RRoD, no standard hard drive, original version having a loud as hell disc drive...yet you complain about "gimped power cables"? Seriously?

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[IndustrialComplex]

I have never, ever, ever heard the word "gimped" until quite recently it apparently become fashionable to use the word in connection with Apple products.

The major difference is that Windows has problems, and people work around them. When Apple has a problem, it's usually by design.

Also

[Sycraft-fu]

Mobile chips don't suck these days. They are not the equal of desktop chips, but they carry their own, at least if you buy the right ones. My laptop has a 5850M in it. Now that isn't equal to a real 5850, it is more like a 5750. However it still plays games just fine. It isn't the same class as the 5870 in my desktop, but for sure the same league. For example Street Fighter 4 on my desktop runs all settings high at 1920x1200, and I can crank up the FSAA. Street Fighter 4 on my laptop hooked to a 1920x1080 TV runs with all settings high, but no FSAA. Not quite as good, but same league. Bad Company 2, Elemental, Mass Effect 2, WoW, etc all run great with high settings on that little 5850M.

I still think Apple needs more system with desktop cards, they are cheaper, faster and easier to upgrade, but the mobilities aren't bad.

Re:Also

[indiechild]

I'd like Apple to make a mid-range desktop tower. Their consumer desktop range, the iMac, uses a lot of laptop components. I wish the iMac had room for a desktop graphics card, but I don't think that's ever going to be the case.

Fuck Apple

[Entropy997]

HAHA! The supposed master of graphics gets an epic fail for driver support. Did I mention they've been putting this hardware into their computers for awhile and still haven't supported 3d graphics properly?

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[mikestew]

Mac OS has 10% of the market for reasons that have little to do with high-end gaming. It's anecdotal, but when I dropped over two grand on an i7 iMac, I wasn't buying it to play games (though I have run through Portal and some of HL2 on it). I knew the graphics card was weak, but web browsers don't care, and neither does a development environment. Nor does your average Farmville player, I'll venture to say. Want to play Crysis? Yeah, don't buy a Mac.

And Flash? You're seriously raising that issue? Flash sucks on any platform you choose, it just sucks less on Windows. Hardly a checkbox on a self-respecting geek's purchase feature list, I hope.

Now works when looking into sun. Big deal.

[Animats]

Apple fixed occlusion query in OpenGL, which matters when you're looking into a light source. Useful when sun near horizon in game. Nice, but no big deal.

Re:Now works when looking into sun. Big deal.

[Narishma]

That's just one example of using occlusion queries. They are used for many other things.

Re:Now works when looking into sun. Big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

From your link:

"Depending on the game, video settings and the hardware, we have measured frame rate improvements from 15% to 120% on these systems. "

Yeah, no big deal. Only DOUBLING YOUR SPEED.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[ickpoo]

Flash also sucks on Linux. Even with setting the configuration to force hardware acceleration my core I7 machine struggles with full screen flash. The newest version of Flash is a huge improvement, but it still has a ways to go.

Your recollection is muddled

[Sycraft-fu]

While you are recalling somewhat correctly, it was more than a little while ago. It was when Vista first launched. Crashes were rampant, people blamed Vista, of course. MS showed that in fact it was 3rd party drivers, not just video drivers, that were the cause. However video drivers were up there. Now there were two reasons for this:

1) Their XP legacy. Vista (and I think 7) actually allows for a more "XP" way of doing things with drivers in the kernel. It isn't recommended but can be done for compatibility. This of course can lead to stability problems.

2) The massive changes for Vista and the new hardware. nVidia was simultaneously supporting a new OS and a completely new graphics card architecture, and having a lot of trouble with it. They were rushing to get DirectX 10 drivers working since people wanted it bad but things just weren't ready. The result was some buggy drivers out there.

None of this is the case anymore. The graphics drivers are quite stable these days. In fact it all cleared up pretty quickly overall. However there was no "all's clear" story when things got stable. Since I've been using 7 (and I started using it right away since Windows support is a big component of my job) I've not had a system crash due to the graphics drivers.

Also you have to be wary when you see any crash reports related to games, because many gamers fuck with their systems. They overclock the GPU, run hacked and/or beta drivers and then cry when things blow up. With WHQL graphics drivers and a stock speed card, I'd be real surprised to see a graphics card caused crash these days.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[jedidiah]

> Yes, because games are the only way to measure the performance of an operating system.

Actually, a game is going to be a pretty good way to measure the performance of an
operating system. Games tend to be under severe competition pressure to do better
than their predecessors both in technical and artistic terms. Game developers are
always trying to push the limits of the current hardware while improving the
underlying algorithms.

Using the same bit of code as the benchmark also better enables an Apples to Apples comparison.

The OS and the degree to which it exploits the hardware might be a part of the
result and that's perfectly valid. It's part of an Operating Systems job to help
you get the most out of your hardware.

If I can do A+B on Linux without a hitch and it brings Windows to it's knees then that's
a clear and obvious mark against Windows.

Not any more actually

[Sycraft-fu]

nVidia invented a slot called MXM that the industry has adopted very widely. Reason is it keeps production costs down. You don't have to have boards special made with a given chip.

However, upgrades are not supported. They can be done, sometimes, but they aren't supported. Reason is that MXM slots can change versions, and they don't notify consumers (since it is intended for OEMs) and also thermal solutions. Your new GPU has to be something the existing laptop can cool.

People do it though, if you sniff around on hard core notebook forums you'll find that people upgrade GPUs, LCD panels, all kinds of shit. The interfaces are actually relatively standard, again to keep costs down. However unlike with a consumer desktop, there is no guarantees of what standard a particular computer will use, or when they change. They also don't make the same efforts at backwards compatibility.

Re:Not any more actually

[UnknowingFool]

So what I'm hearing is that there are some laptops out there that will allow you to physically change out the video card; however, the compatibility is not guaranteed and not all upgrades will work. So is this feature worth buying?

Re:Not any more actually

[Sycraft-fu]

Ummmm.... Depends. You will probably end up buying it anyhow, like it or not, if you buy a laptop with a discrete graphics solution. As I said, MXM was invented for that and is nearly universally used. Should you look for it? Well that depends on how much you care about trying to upgrade the laptop, rather than replace it, and how much you are willing to spend. The components are quite expensive. For example a 5870m is 350 Euro, which translates to $450 or so. Well that is more expensive than a desktop 5870, but its performance is more around that of a 5750 or 5770 which are about $150.

To do the upgrade you have to make sure three things are all ok:

1) The version of the MXM slot. There aren't too many, but still.
2) The physical size of the MXM card. This varies a bit and the new one has to be the same.
3) The thermal and electrical solution. If you system currently deals with a 25watt card, dropping a 100watt card in there is going to burn something out.

So it can be done, if you are technically inclined, it just can be expensive and difficult. Plus if you break it, nobody is likely to honour any kind of warranty.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Upgrade-Replace-a-Notebook-Video-Card.3236.0.html has more info.

Re:Not any more actually

[Omestes]

A slim chance in hell to up upgrade your GPU is better than no chance whatsoever, I suppose.

The lack of expandability is part of why I stopped buying macs. Upgrading a MacMini is one of the most annoying experiences I've suffered through (and I'm about to stick a new HDD in it next). I switched back to a PC about 4 years ago (after being Mac only for 5), and I've pretty much upgraded my whole machine, piece by piece, depending on what deals there are, and how ambitious I'm feeling.

hipsters rejoice!

[Anonymous Coward]

MACs are one step closer to becoming a real comp!
Yeah a huge step at that for the cheesy little toys..

Wow first they start using real CPUs, and now some more real software is ported over.
/puke Perhaps this will actually be a small boost for the PC gaming industry.. and in the end.. Windows

Now if Steam would get on the ball and put some more development into Linux Steam..

Re:hipsters rejoice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Geezuz you're a fuckin' asshole.

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[Blakey Rat]

Why has nobody ever complained that Microsoft gimped the computing experience for whole generations of customers,

I'm sorry, is this your first day on Slashdot?

People gripe and moan about that a thousand times every day.

I don't get what your point is here-- are you upset that the grandparent didn't drop in a "Windows is gimped" reference, even though that would be grossly off-topic?

Silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

You truly have no idea what you are talking about.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[Mongoose Disciple]

It's supremely ironic to me how many geeks have come out as roaring advocates for Flash since the Adobe/Apple battle started, when before that most self-respecting techies (rightfully!) loathed Flash.

I think you're glossing over a large pragmatic contingent.

I hate Flash as a user; I've hated working with it as a developer. However, that doesn't change the fact that for at least ten years it has had overwhelming dominance in its segment of the market. Even a product like the iPod that has such total market dominance that its name has essentially become the word for the kind of thing that it is (i.e., people will call a non-iPod mp3 player an iPod) pales, in a market-share sense, before Flash.

It is the product everyone loves to hate, and yet, that no competitor yet has put a serious dent in. It's possible to both hate Flash and admit the reality that it is king of the jungle. I hope that someone will set a pack of lion-hunting dogs on Flash and take it down, but I still live in a world in which that day has not come and shows no real signs of coming despite what anyone has to say about Silverlight or HTML5 or giant JavaScript libraries or anything else.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[EvanED]

Actually, a game is going to be a pretty good way to measure the performance of an
operating system. Games tend to be under severe competition pressure to do better
than their predecessors both in technical and artistic terms.

It also doesn't test several other aspects of an OS though. Games do the bulk of their disk accesses at startup and loading, rather than while going along. It doesn't test as well the OS's scheduler, because if you're gaming you're probably not running a bunch of tests in the background. (This is less and less true now that multithreading is more common, but there are still a number of things that differ when scheduling multiple processes that all want the CPU. And that is leaving behind scheduling to improve I/O performance or interactivity.)

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[Moridineas]

It is the product everyone loves to hate, and yet, that no competitor yet has put a serious dent in. It's possible to both hate Flash and admit the reality that it is king of the jungle. I hope that someone will set a pack of lion-hunting dogs on Flash and take it down, but I still live in a world in which that day has not come and shows no real signs of coming despite what anyone has to say about Silverlight or HTML5 or giant JavaScript libraries or anything else.

I think we're closer than you might imagine. I run Safari with ClickToFlash (basically noflash). Most youtube videos run just fine as HTML5. A lot of websites have recently transitioned away from flash menus/interfaces. Most of the flash I see blocked is banner ads.

Don't get me wrong, I like flash games, and don't have a problem with some uses of flash, but for probably 90% of the content I run into with flash, I hate it. I don't miss it on my iPhone except for the rare instance when a website (usually a restaurant website) doesn't load without flash.

Guaranteed in the top 2...

[raehl]

When the options are:

Video Drivers
Anything Else

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[Myopic]

Just to be clear, Macs are popular because they run MacOS, not because the hardware is stellar. If you want to run MacOS, which many people consider substantially superior to the alternatives, and you don't want to screw around with hackintoshes, then you have to buy a Mac.

I do like my few-year-old Mac very much, but for political and ethical reasons I am no longer an Apple customer. People who do not share my politics and ethics are the people who continue to buy Macs, for that comfy Mac experience.

Re:apple needs a midtower and better hardware choi

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel free to replace it by tweaked for the Microsoft world and twinked for the MMO crowd.

That puts Apple ahead of Steam, then...

[Rimbo]

Seriously. I'll worry about Mac's graphics problems about the same time Steam fixes this completely unreasonable and ridiculous requirement that it be installed on a case-insensitive filesystem. I converted my HDD to case-sensitive and everything else seems to work just fine with it... what the hell, man?

Re:That puts Apple ahead of Steam, then...

[geekoid]

"..."nverted my HDD to case-sensitive

what the hell, man?

OMG HOW?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did he get modded insightful?! First, they never ported their games to openGL because doing so would take just as long as writing the game in the first place (at least the engine part). If you are curious how they did it, then it was simply DirectX wrapper functions. So no, you still need DirectX, which is supported in OSX using said functions and not by any Linux distros.
 
Still, you ignore the main point: Linux is hardest to develop graphical systems for (such as games) AND has the smallest user base. How does your wish make any sense?
 
Side note: Looking through the updated (v.3.1) openGL, it is now comparable and very usable over DirectX. However, openGL didn't support many features needed for modern game development until last year. In other words, it will probably be AT LEAST 3 more years until you see games developed in openGL again. My guess is Microsoft ups the ante with new must-have DirectX features by mid next year to stay King of Games. Personally I'm very satisfied with DirectX, but I would still choose openGL over DirectX for non-gaming graphics!!

Re:OMG HOW?

[evJeremy]

You have no idea how ignorant that first paragraph makes you seem.

Did you run any Intel stuff on that rig?

[Gazzonyx]

Any chance you ran any Intel chips on that OS? If so, how did they fair?

I've got a theory that Intel has always been a premium hardware with superior software support at a premium price point as compared to ATI and nVidia. Their compilers are objectively better on their hardware (once again, at a premium price) when running multiple threads, IIRC, as well.

In fact

[Sycraft-fu]

These days DLL hell on Windows... Isn't. The problem was big back in the day when DLLs were for the purpose of reducing memory usage. Idea is you had only one version of a library and everything loaded that. Good, low disk and memory usage which was a premium. Of course if different things needed different versions then there could be a problem, hence "DLL hell."

Well the biggest part of that was eliminated quite awhile ago. Now each app gets its own copy of all DLLs. Complete memory protection and isolation. Uses more RAM, of course, but who cares? It just isn't a big deal and the stability and security gains are worth it. Ok well that also means that if you want DLLs for your program, just stick them in the directory. You don't have to install them system wide anymore. You find most games do that, you go to their directory and you'll see mss.dll (Miles Sound), binkw32.dll (Bink video format), d3dx9_36.dll (optional DX component) and so on. They just toss in all the libraries they need.

Finally, for things that are system installed for any reason, Windows maintains versions for each app. Again, takes up disk space but with prices under $0.10/GB doesn't matter.

This days DLLs on Windows are only for what their name implies: Dynamic linking. You can easily license libraries like Miles or whatever and add their function via a DLL, rather than having to get all the code and compile it in to the main executable.

The management of DLLs is just a non-issue. Also I'm not just talking in make believe terms here, Windows support is a major part of my job. I don't concern myself about DLLs. I just install the software and it contains all relevant DLLs or, in the case of system DLLs, spawns an installer for those. System DLLs aren't a problem, I haven't encountered a case of a version conflict (since they are cached per app as needed).

Re:In fact

[lucian1900]

That's a VERY silly solution. Shared libraries save both storage and memory, and a lot of the latter. There is no issue with memory isolation, the kernel does that. If you have a proper package manager, not using shared libraries is stupid.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[EvanED]

Most youtube videos run just fine as HTML5.

Only sort of: I was going to say "if you're using a browser that supports H.264, which includes neither the most popular browser out there (IE), what is probably the most popular browser amongst geeks (Firefox, though Chrome might have this title), or my chosen browser (Opera)", but it seems that this is starting to change. (I didn't actually notice this.)

But it hasn't changed yet: lots of videos haven't been transcoded to WebM yet, and the browser support is only barely starting to get there. (E.g. if you're a Firefox user, not only will many videos not play because they aren't yet WebM, but you have to use a beta release of the browser.)

And that may even ignore all the websites that embed YouTube videos locally; you'll need Flash if you want to see what they have for a long time I suspect.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[EvanED]

I didn't actually notice this

s/notice/know/

And I left this out before but I'll say it now... I browse with plugins (& Javascript) turned off globally. The number of websites I turn it on for is depressingly high.

The other huge advantage that Flash has is authoring tools: if you're actually doing some sort of animation, I don't know anything in the same arena that is even remotely close.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[DurendalMac]

No, it isn't. A game will not stress the multitasking abilities of an OS, for starters, at least not unless you're running a bunch of stuff in the background. It will largely stress the video systems...and that's about it, at least moreso than other benchmarks. GP was acting like game performance was the primary way to measure the speed of an OS, when all it really does is stress a single facet. There are other benchmarks far better suited to pounding on an OS in a more comprehensive fashion than games. For instance, I remember seeing a comparison between OS X and XP years ago. XP certainly did have higher framerates, but when it came to multitasking and accomplishing numerous CPU-intensive tasks at once, OS X kicked XP's ass up and down the street, coming out with a much wider difference than accomplishing a single CPU-intensive task.

Set theory fail

[FallinWithStyle]

Does it not make anyone else cringe when people talk of the PC and Mac as if one isn't a subset of the other? This is 10x more annoying then iEverything...

This secretly fixed a showstopping bug

[cstacy]

Ever since the last system update from Apple, none of my Macs (laptops or desktops) have been able to run various graphics programs without crashing. It would crash the entire windowserver process, killing the desktop and all running apps!

This latest update for graphics has fixed that bug.

I notice that Apple never seems to have acknowledged the bug, despite people screaming in the support forums, and that the System Update doesn't mention that it's obtw fixing a total showstopper that has plagued many users for the last 6 weeks on all platforms - nothing to do with the games cited.

Um, it's called SDL.

[Pizza]

SimpleDirectMedia Layer. (http://www.libsdl.org/)

With SDL, you can do 2D, 3D (via OpenGL), Sound, Input, and basic video overlay. It supports well over a dozen platforms, including consoles.

GPU-accelerated video decoding isn't supported/exported, but that's not part of DirectX.
SDL even has a Networking layer too, but it's not part of the core. (Actually DirectPlay is deprecated, and its replacement isn't part of DirectX either)

[Citation Needed] Re:I don't know if they...

[EXTomar]

Do you have evidence or example behavior/feature that shows that OSX doesn't have a very fast 3D layer? Otherwise the most damning thing about OSX graphics engine is that it isn't DirectX. That isn't better or worse but simply different.

Re:[Citation Needed] Re:I don't know if they...

[Rockoon]

Besides the obvious evidence of people with MAC's dual booting and running the same games on both OSX and Windows on the same hardware and getting significantly better frame rates on Windows...

The simple fact of the matter is that OpenGL is not the same interface paradigm as modern DirectX. In the early days of Direct3D they were quite similar, but eventually Direct3D evolved to have two different rendering paradigms.. one called Immediate Mode (like OpenGL) and one called Retained Mode.

Now, Immediate Mode is a lower level interface to the hardware than Retained Mode is, and that in fact Retained Mode is implemented as a layer on top of Immediate Mode. OpenGL does immediate mode better than Direct3D's immediate mode, but as it turns out that doesnt actually matter in trms of modern game rendering pipelines.

What Microsoft has done with this Retained Mode is encompassed many optimizations, and its all centered around queuing up many rendering calls that make up a scene frame. It can then issues large batches of rendering commands to the video hardware all it once, grouping similarly textured/shadered polygons together, as well as geometry that uses the same transformation matrix, etc.. so that the state of the GPU (shaders, texture sets, transformation matrices, etc..) needs to be updated less often than a visit-each-object-once Immediate Mode algorithm would have had to do.

These state changes are expensive, often requiring the GPU to completely finish all other operations (flushing its own queue) before the state can be updated, greatly reducing parallelism. That visit-each-object-once algorithm in Immediate Mode could require 30,000 state changes while in retained mode that same visit-each-object-once algorithm only requires 5,000. As it turns out, this is a significant win that more than offsets the less efficient Immediate Mode.

This could be implemented on top of OpenGL too, so OSX could certainly do it.. but the fact is that it hasnt been done all that well yet anywhere but DirectX and a few big-name ($$$) OpenGL-centric game engines that handle it themselves.

Re:Steam is evil.

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

Steam wont send me the confirmation email for my account.

They took my money, but since they won't send me an email, I can't do squat about
support. Basically I am just ripped off.

Now you're probably already accustomed to being ripped off (being a Mac owner), but once you have your steam account here's what the future holds for you, at no charge:

* Take down your pants
* Insert a (light red/light blue/light green) popsicle in your ass
* Start "visiting the pope"

That's basically the exact same experience you will get if you choose to upgrade your mac so that you can run these new games that Steam isn't letting you install or run.

(Note: I am a Mac owner who enjoys his Mac under linux, where opengl is but a fair memory of happy accelerated days using university computers where it does "just work").

O crap, now with all this rambling I've gone and missed any point.

I've probably not even said anything the slightest bit relevant to what you originally said. This would explain why I don't get modpoints anymore and I am a burden on the system.

I love friday nights.

Yes, that games run like shit on it

[Sycraft-fu]

That you take StarCraft 2 or Portal and run them on OS-X, then reboot that same system in to Windows 7 and the games run better.

smcFanControl

[single_user_mode]

Be prepared to install and run a 3rd party app called smcFanControl if you do anything graphically demanding with a mac, in particular the imac. Games have a tendency to overheat them, which drastically shortens there lifespan. Apple is of course in complete denial about the 'problem' but you know recommending users to ramp up there cooling fans while playing games would go against there quiet, sleek, hip imac marketing campaign. *sigh*

Don't forget DRM

[Ilgaz]

As far as I know, there is DRM in Steam's offerings. So, while Linux users begging for DRM looks funny a bit, it may get really bad later especially for their (good) image and the possibility of some "DVD Jon" scandal.

As I said back in 1990s, all these guys does know "gamer linux guy" can and will dual boot to Windows to play his game. So, why would they bother? Dual boot is the worst thing happened to Linux and it keeps happening. Effect on OS X scene was not that disastrous as I was afraid of, people didn't become dual booting windows users because of boot camp and companies do know that you can't really make a guy to dual boot to windows that easy.

Nobody seems bugged about this?

[Ilgaz]

The graphics update (actually,driver update) is only available for 10.6.x running Macs. For example, not 10.5.8 running Intels.

10.6 relation to 10.5 is more like Vista vs. 7, both are operating systems coded as "enhancing" and "plugging into" the previous one. So, you can use 99% of Vista drivers on Windows 7 etc.

Here comes the issue: As you know, you don't go to Nvidia to get updated OS X drivers. They don't exist. It is Apple Inc. who provides drivers. I thought they were acting like sh*t to PPC users but they also seem to abandon any Intel user who dares to stay "stable", on previous major version with all updates. It is just like Nvidia rejecting to support Windows Vista or 1 previous major version Linux kernel.

Just recently, "the evil MS" released "platform update" to Vista, down to "Vista basic" which enables it to have a common framework for GPU processing. Nvidia (and probably ATI) released drivers supporting that standard and magically even $50 "Vista Starter" had GPU processing. Of course, as long as someone codes an application using that standard.

Don't forget Flash plugin on Windows supports GPU decoding down to XP because operating system allows it and it also has driver updates.

Worst part is, I am typing these on an Apple computer. Apple Inc. one more manages to make me give MS as example of how things should be done.

Re:Nobody seems bugged about this?

[davvr6]

everything I have tried so far works just fine! Steam is good! In a while will buy the new card ( ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB ) and keep the old 512 one as a spare. Model Name: Mac Pro Model Identifier: MacPro4,1 Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 4 L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 8 MB Memory: 24 GB Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s ATI Radeon HD 4870

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[Moridineas]

The number of websites I turn it on for is depressingly high.

I only use NoScript on one computer, occasionally. I mostly find it a pain in the butt, but I do think it's sickening to see how many tracking javascripts are included on many popular sites.

Agree re: flash authoring tools.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[badkarmadayaccount]

Network stack latency for player events, disk access latency for large textures, advanced AIs requiring good multithreaded performance...

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[badkarmadayaccount]

Try running a traditional, unix style process per client web server on OS X, then boot linux on the same harware, and tell me how it goes.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[EvanED]

Network access latency, sure.

I'm not sure I buy disk access latency though; my impression is most of the textures and whatnot the program will need are loaded into RAM during the loading screen. How much disk access is going on while you're actually playing?

Scheduling threads within a process is important, but it's in some sense a somewhat different and easier problem than timesharing across processes.

Re:this is why Mac market share is around 10%

[badkarmadayaccount]

Ypu can store all the textures in RAM if they fit, which is not always, *cough*Crysis. Process vs thread scheduling, cite? If anything threads are harder because they share resources.